Gautier Théophile
Wanderings in Spain
As we are now pretty well acquainted with theatrical matters, let us proceed to view the public buildings; they will not detain us long. The Queen's Palace is a square solid building of fine stones strongly put together, with a great profusion of windows, and a corresponding number of doors, Ionic columns, Doric pilasters, and all the other elements of what is termed architectural good taste. The immense terraces which support it, and the snow-covered mountains of the Guadarrama rising behind, relieve any tendency to sameness or vulgarity which its outline might otherwise present. In the interior, Velasquez, Maella, Bayen, and Tiepolo, have painted some of the ceilings in a more or less allegorical style. The grand staircase is very fine, and was considered by Napoleon to be superior to that at the Tuileries.
The building in which the Cortes meet is interspersed with Pæstumian columns, and lions in long perukes, exhibiting the most abominable want of taste; I doubt very much whether good laws can be made in an edifice of this description. Opposite the chamber of the Cortes, in the middle of the square, is a bronze statue of Miguel Cervantes. It is, doubtless, a very praiseworthy action to erect a statue to the immortal author of "Don Quixote," but I think they should have erected a better one.
The monument raised to the memory of the victims of the Dos de Mayo is situated on the Prado, not far from the picture-gallery. On perceiving it, I thought for a moment that I was suddenly transported to the Place de la Concorde, at Paris, and beheld, as if in some fantastic mirage, the venerable obelisk of Luxor, which, up to that time, I had never suspected of any taste for vagabondism. The monument is composed of a kind of grey granite cippus, surmounted by an obelisk of reddish granite, the tone of which is very similar to that of the Obelisk at Paris. It is a pity that the Spanish obelisk is not made of a single block. The names of the victims are engraved in golden letters on the sides of the pedestal. The Dos de Mayo is an heroic and glorious episode, which the Spaniards have a slight tendency to make the most of; you perceive engravings and pictures of it wherever you go. You will have no difficulty in believing that we Frenchmen are not represented in them as being very handsome; we look as frightful as the Prussians of the Cirque Olympique.
The Armeria does not come up to the ideas generally entertained of it. The Museum of Artillery at Paris is, beyond comparison, far richer and more complete. In the Armeria at Madrid there are very few entire suits, with the various portions of which they are composed belonging to one another; helmets of one period being stuck upon breastplates of another as well as of quite a different style. The reason given for this confusion is, that at the time of the French invasion all these curious relics were hidden away in lofts and other places, where they were so mixed up and jumbled together that it was subsequently impossible to reunite the different parts with any certainty. No degree of credit can therefore be placed in the description of the guides. We were shown a carriage of admirably-carved wood-work, said to be that of Joanna of Aragon, mother of Charles V., but it evidently could not be more ancient than the reign of Louis XIV. The chariot of Charles V., with its leather cushions and curtains, struck us as far more authentic. There are very few Moorish weapons: two or three shields, and a few yatagans form the whole collection. The greatest curiosities are the embroidered saddles, studded with gold and silver stars, and covered with steel scales; these are very numerous and of all kinds of strange shapes, but it is impossible to say to what period or to whom they belonged. The English admire very much a kind of triumphal hackney-coach made of wrought iron, and presented to Ferdinand somewhere about the year 1823 or 1824.
I may here mention some fountains of a very corrupt rococo style, but very amusing; the bridge of Toledo, a specimen of bad taste, very rich and highly ornamented with ovalos and chicory leaves, and a few strangely-variegated churches surmounted by Muscovite turrets. We will now direct our steps towards the Buen Retiro, a royal residence situated at the distance of a few paces from the Prado. We Frenchmen, who possess Versailles and Saint Cloud, and could formerly boast of Marly, are difficult to please in the matter of royal residences. The Buen Retiro strikes us as being the realization of the dreams of some well-to-do tallowchandler. It is a garden filled with the most ordinary but glaring flowers, and little basins ornamented with vermicular rustic rock-work, and small fountains like those we see in certain fishmongers' shops. It also contains pieces of green water, on which swim wooden swans painted white and varnished, besides an infinity of other marvels of a very ordinary description. The natives fall into ecstasies before a certain rustic pavilion built of small round blocks, the interior of which has rather strong claims to being considered Hindoo in style. The first Jardin Turc at Paris, the primitive and patriarchal Jardin Turc, with its kiosks and windows filled with small coloured panes, through which you saw a blue, green, or red landscape, was far superior both in taste and magnificence. There is also a certain Swiss cottage, which is the most ridiculous and absurd affair it is possible to imagine. At the side of this cottage is a stable, furnished with a goat and a kid both stuffed, and also with a sow of grey stone, suckling a litter of young pigs of the same material. A few paces from the cottage the guide suddenly leaves you, and opens the door in a mysterious manner. When, at last, he calls you and gives you leave to enter, you hear low rumbling of wheels and balance-weights, and find yourself in the presence of a number of frightful automatons, who are churning, spinning, or rocking, with their wooden feet, children equally wooden, and sleeping in carved cradles: in the next room is the grandfather ill in bed, while his medicine is standing on a table beside him. Such is a very accurate summary of the principal wonders of the Buen Retiro. A fine equestrian statue in bronze of Philip V., the pose of which resembles that of the statue of Louis XIV. in the Place des Victoires at Paris, makes up in some degree for all these absurdities.
The description of the Museum at Madrid would require a whole volume. It is rich in the extreme, and contains a very large number of the works of Titian, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Rubens, Velasquez, Ribeira, and Murillo. The pictures are hung in an excellent light, and the architectural style of the building is tolerably good, especially in the interior. The Façade looks on the Prado, and is a specimen of bad taste, but taken altogether the building does honour to the architect, Villa Nueva, who drew the plans. After the Museum, the next place to be visited is the Cabinet of Natural History, containing the mastodon, or dinotherium giganteum, a marvellous specimen of the fossil world, with bones like bars of iron. It must at least be the behemoth mentioned in the Bible. The collection also contains a lump of virgin gold weighing sixteen pounds, a number of Chinese gongs, the sound of which, in spite of what people say, very much resembles that which is produced if you kick a copper, and a succession of pictures representing all the possible varieties which can be produced by crossing white, black, and copper-coloured races. I must not forget in the academy three admirable pictures by Murillo, – namely, the Foundation of Santa Maria Mayora (two pictures), and Saint Elizabeth washing the heads of persons afflicted with scurvy; two or three admirable Ribeiras; a Burial, by El Greco, some portions of which are worthy of Titian; a fantastic sketch by the same artist, representing monks performing different acts of penance, and surpassing the most mysterious and gloomy creations of Lewis or Anne Radcliffe; and a charming woman in Spanish costume, lying on a divan, by the good old Goya, that pre-eminently national painter, who seems to have come into the world expressly to collect the last vestiges of the ancient manners and customs of his country, which were about to disappear for ever.
Francisco Goya y Lucientes, was the last who could be recognised as a descendant of Velasquez. After him come Aparicio, Lopez, and others of the same stamp. The decadence of art is complete: the cyclus is closed! Who shall ever recommence it? Goya is, indeed, a strange painter – a most singular genius! Never was originality more decided – never was a Spanish painter more local. One of Goya's sketches, consisting of four touches of his graver in a cloud of aquatint, tells you more about the manners of the country than the longest description. From his adventurous kind of life, his impetuosity, and his manifold talents, Goya seems to belong to the best period of the art; and yet he was in some sort a contemporary, having died at Bordeaux in 1828.
Before attempting to judge his works, let us give a summary sketch of his biography. Don Francisco Goya y Lucientes was born in Aragon. His parents were not affluent, but their circumstances were sufficiently easy to offer no obstacle to his natural talents. His taste for drawing and painting was developed at an early age. He travelled, studied for some time at Rome, and returned to Spain, where he very soon made a fortune at the court of Charles IV., who conferred on him the title of Painter to the King. He was received at the Queen's, the Prince of Benavente's, and the Duchess d'Alba's; and lived in the same grand style as Rubens, Van Dyck, and Velasquez – a mode of existence so highly favourable to the development of picturesque genius. He had, in the neighbourhood of Madrid, a delicious casa de campo, where he used to give fêtes, and where he had his studio.
Goya was very prolific; he painted sacred subjects, frescoes, portraits, and sketches of manners, besides producing etchings, aquatints, and lithographic drawings. In everything he did, even in the slightest sketches, he gave proof of the most vigorous talent; the hand of the lion is evident in his most careless works. Although his talent was perfectly original, it is a strange mixture of Velasquez, Rembrandt, and Reynolds; reminding you in turns, or at the same time, of all these masters, but as the son reminds you of his ancestors, without any servile imitation, – or rather, more by a certain congeniality of taste than by any formal wish.
His pictures in the Museum at Madrid consist of the portraits of Charles IV. and his Queen on horseback: the heads are admirably painted, and are full of life, delicacy, and intelligence; a Picador, and the "Massacre of the Second of May," a scene from the French Invasion. The Duke d'Ossuna possesses several of Goya's works, and there is hardly a family of consequence that has not some portrait or sketch of his. The interior of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, where there is a fête which is pretty numerously attended, at the distance of half a league from Madrid, is painted in fresco by Goya, with that boldness and effect which characterize him. At Toledo, in one of the capitular rooms, we saw a painting of his, representing Jesus betrayed by Judas. The effect of night is such as Rembrandt would not have disowned; indeed, I should have attributed the picture to him, had not a canon pointed out to me the signature of the famous painter of Charles IV. In the sacristy of the cathedral at Seville there is also a picture of great merit by Goya, representing Saint Justine and Saint Ruffine, virgins and martyrs, who were both daughters of a potter, a circumstance that is indicated by the alcarazas and cantaros grouped at their feet.
Goya's mode of painting was as eccentric as his talent. He kept his colours in tubs, and applied them to the canvass by means of sponges, brooms, rags, and everything that happened to be within his reach. He put on his tones with a trowel, as it were, exactly like so much mortar, and painted touches of sentiment with large daubs of his thumb. From the fact of his working in this offhand and expeditious manner, he would cover some thirty feet of wall in a couple of days. This method certainly appears somewhat to exceed even the licence accorded to the most impetuous and fiery genius; the most dashing painters are but children compared with him. He executed, with a spoon for a brush, a painting of the "Dos de Mayo," where some French troops are shooting a number of Spaniards. It is a work of incredible vigour and fire; but, curious as it is, it is dishonourably banished to the antechamber in the museum at Madrid.
The individuality of this artist is so strong and so determined, that it is difficult to give even the faintest notion of it. Goya is not a caricaturist like Hogarth, Bunbury, or Cruikshank; Hogarth was serious and phlegmatic, as exact and minute as one of Richardson's novels, always impressing some moral lesson on the mind of the spectator; Bunbury and Cruikshank, so remarkable for their sly humour and their comic exaggeration, have nothing in common with the author of the "Caprichos." Callot might at first appear to be more like him, for Callot was half Spaniard, half gipsy; but Callot is distinct, delicate, clear, definite, and true to nature, despite the mannerism of his forms and the extravagant and braggart style of his costume; his most singular devilries are rigorously possible; his etchings are always remarkable for their strong light, for the minute attention to the various details in them is fatal to effect and chiaro-oscuro, which can only be obtained by sacrificing them. The compositions of Goya are enveloped in the deepest gloom of night, traversed merely by an unexpected ray of light, which brings out some pale outlines or strange phantoms.
Goya's works are a mixture of those of Rembrandt, Watteau, and the comical dreams of Rabelais; a strange union! Add to all this, a strong Spanish flavour, a strong dose of the picaresque spirit of Cervantes, when he drew the portraits of the Escalanta and the Gananciosa in Rinconete and Cortadillo, and even then you will only have an imperfect notion of Goya's talent. We will endeavour to explain it more exactly, if, indeed, it is possible to do so by mere words.
Goya's drawings are executed in aquatinta, touched up and picked out with aquafortis; nothing can be more frank, more free, and more easy. A single stroke expresses a whole physiognomy, and a trail of shade serves as a background, or allows the spectator to catch a glimpse of some landscape only half-sketched in, or some pass of a sierra, fit scenes for a murder, a witches' sabbath, or a tertulia of gipsies; but this is rare, for the background cannot be said to exist in Goya's works. Like Michael Angelo, he completely despises external nature, and only takes just sufficient to enable him to group his figures, and very often he composes his background of clouds alone. From time to time, there is a portion of a wall cut off by a large angle of shade, a hedge hardly indicated, and that is all. For the want of a better word, we have said that Goya was a caricaturist. But his caricatures are in the style of Hoffmann, where fancy always goes hand in hand with criticism, and often rises to the gloomy and the terrible. It seems as if all these grinning heads had been drawn by the talons of Smarra, on the wall of some suspicious alcove, lighted by the flickering of an expiring lamp. You feel transported into some unheard-of, impossible, but still real world. The trunks of the trees look like phantoms, the men resemble hyenas, owls, cats, asses, or hippopotamuses; their nails may be talons, their shoes covered with bows may conceal cloven feet; that young cavalier may be some old corpse, and his trunk hose, ornamented with ribbons, envelop perhaps a fleshless thigh-bone and two shrunk legs; never did more mysterious and sinister apparitions issue from behind the stove of Dr. Faustus.
It is said that Goya's caricatures contain certain political allusions, but they are few in number. They are directed against Godoy, the old Duchess de Benavente, the favourites of the queen, and some of the noblemen of the court, whose vices and ignorance they stigmatize. But you must seek their meaning through the folds of the thick veil with which they are covered. Goya executed, also, other drawings for his friend, the Duchess d'Alba; but they have never been made public, doubtless, on account of the ease with which they could be applied to the persons caricatured in them. Some of them ridicule the fanaticism, gluttony, and stupidity of the monks, while others represent subjects of public manners or witchcraft.
The portrait of Goya serves as a frontispiece to the collected edition of his works. He is represented as a man of about fifty, with a quick oblique glance, a large eyelid and a sly, mocking, crow's-foot beneath. The chin is curved upwards, the upper lip is thin, and the lower one prominent and sensual. The face is surrounded by whiskers of a description peculiar to natives of southern climates and the head is covered by a hat à la Bolivar. The whole physiognomy is that of a man of strongly-developed character.
The first plate represents a money match, a poor young girl sacrificed by her avaricious parents, to a cacochymical and horrible old man. The bride looks charming with her little black velvet mask, and her basquina ornamented with deep fringe, for Goya represents Andalusian and Castilian beauty most marvellously; her parents are hideous with rapacity and envious misery, resembling in the most astounding manner sharks and crocodiles. The poor child is laughing through her tears, like the sun piercing an April shower. All around is a mere mass of eyes, claws, and teeth: the intoxicating effects of dress prevent the girl from yet feeling the whole extent of her misfortune. This is a subject which often returns to the point of Goya's pencil, and he always succeeds in producing very striking effects. Further on, we have el Coco, "Bogy," who frightens little children, and who would frighten many others of more mature age, for, with the exception of the ghost of Samuel in Salvator Rosa's picture of the "Witch of Endor," I do not know of anything more horrible than this goblin. Then, again, we see a number of majos whispering soft things to dapper young damsels on the Prado – handsome creatures with tightly-fitting silk stockings, little pointed slippers, which are only kept on the foot by the tip of the great toe, high-backed tortoiseshell combs, with open carving, and more lofty than the mural crown of Cybele; black lace mantillas, worn like a hood, and casting a velvety shadow on the finest black eyes in the world; short-skirted petticoats loaded with lead, the better to show off the rich form of the hips; beauty spots placed most murderously at the corner of the mouth, and near the temples; heart-breakers sufficient to break all the hearts in Spain, and large fans spread out like the tail of a peacock. There are also hidalgos in pumps and prodigious coats, with flat cocked-hats under their arms, and large bunches of seals and keys hanging on their stomach making their bows à trois temps, leaning over the backs of the chairs, in order to puff, like the smoke of their cigars, clouds of light-hearted madrigals into some thick mass of beautiful black hair, or leading about some divinity of more or less doubtful character, by the tips of their white kid gloves. In another page, again, you see a number of complaisant mothers, giving their too obedient daughters advice worthy of the Macette of Régnier, washing and greasing them to go to the witches' sabbath. The type of the "Complaisant Mother" is marvellously rendered by Goya, who, like all the Spanish painters, possesses a ready and profound sense of the ignoble. It is impossible to fancy anything more grotesquely horrible, more viciously deformed. Each of these frightful old shrews unites in her own person the ugliness of the seven capital sins; compared to them, the Prince of Darkness himself is pretty. Just fancy whole ditches and counterscarps of wrinkles; eyes like live coals that have been extinguished in blood; noses like the neck of an alembic, covered with warts and other excrescences; nostrils like those of the snout of a hippopotamus rendered formidable by stiff bristles; whiskers like a tiger's; a mouth like the slit in the top of a money box, contracted by a horrible and convulsive grin; a something between the spider and the multiped, which makes you feel the same kind of disgust as if you had placed your foot upon the belly of a toad. Such are Goya's works as far as the actual world is concerned, but it is when he abandons himself to his demonographic inspirations that he is especially admirable: no one can represent as he can, floating in the warm atmosphere of a stormy night, dark masses of clouds loaded with vampires, goblins and demons, or make a cavalcade of witches stand out with such startling effect from the sinister background of the horizon.
There is one plate especially which is altogether fantastic, and realizes the most frightful nightmare that ever any human being perceived in his dreams. It is entitled "Y aun no se van." It is frightful; and even Dante himself never reached such a degree of suffocating terror. Fancy a bare mournful plain, over which a shapeless cloud, like a crocodile that has been ripped open, creeps with difficulty along, and a large stone, the top of some tomb or other, which a shrivelled, thin figure is attempting to raise. The stone is, however, too heavy for the fleshless arms that support it, and which you feel are on the point of snapping, and falls to the ground in spite of all the efforts of the spectre and of other smaller phantoms, who are simultaneously stiffening their shadowy arms; many of these smaller phantoms are crushed beneath the stone, which has been raised for a moment. The expression of despair depicted on all these cadaverous physiognomies, in all these eyeless sockets, that see that their labour is useless, is truly tragic, and presents the most melancholy symbol of powerless labour, the most sombre piece of poetry and bitter derision ever produced on the subject of the dead. The plate called "Buen Viage," representing a flight of demons, pupils of the seminary of Barahona, who are winging their course with all possible speed towards some deed without a name, is remarkable for its energy and vivacity. It seems as if you actually heard all these membranes, covered with hair and furnished with claws like the wings of a bat, palpitating in the thick night air. The collection concludes with these words: "Y es ora" (It is the hour); the cock crows, and the phantoms disappear; for it is again day.
As to the esthetic and moral meaning of these works, what was it? We do not know. Goya seems to have given his opinion on the subject in one of his drawings, which represents a man with his head leant upon his arms, and a number of owls and storks flying around. The motto is, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. This is true, but it is terribly severe.
The Caprichos are the only productions of Goya in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris. He has, however, produced other works, – namely, the "Tauromaquia," a collection of thirty-three plates; "Scenes of the Invasion," which make twenty plates, and ought to make more than forty; the etchings after Velasquez and many others.
The "Tauromaquia" is a collection of scenes representing various episodes of the bull-fights, from the time of the Moors down to the present day. Goya was a finished aficionado, passing a considerable portion of his time with the torreros, so that he was the most competent person in the world to treat the matter thoroughly. Although the attitudes, positions, the defence and the attack, or, to speak technically, the various suertes and cogidas are remarkable for their irreproachable exactitude; Goya has invested the different scenes with his mysterious shadows and fantastic colouring. What strange and ferocious heads! What savage and odd dresses! What fury in the action! His Moors, treated somewhat in the manner of the Turks in the time of the Empire, as far as costume is concerned, have the most characteristic physiognomies imaginable – a stroke roughly scratched in, a black spot, a streak of light, is sufficient to form a personage who lives, who moves, and whose physiognomy remains for ever impressed upon your memory. The bulls and horses, although sometimes fabulous in their proportions, have an expression of life and vigour which is often wanting in the works of animal painters by profession: the exploits of Gazul, of the Cid, of Charles V., of Romero, of the Student of Falces, and of Pepe Illo, who perished miserably in the arena, are traced with a truthfulness altogether Spanish. Like the "Caprichos," the plates of the "Tauromaquia" are executed in aquatinta, touched with aquafortis.
The "Scenes of the Invasion" would afford matter for a curious comparison with the "Horrors of War," by Callot. They consist of one long series of persons hanged, heaps of dead being stripped of all they possess, women being violated, wounded persons being carried away, prisoners being shot, convents being sacked, a population in the act of flight, families reduced to beggary, and patriots being strangled; all represented with such fantastic accessories and so exorbitant an aspect as would lead any one to suppose that he was looking at an invasion of Tartars in the fourteenth century. But what delicacy, what a profound knowledge of anatomy, is displayed in all these groups, which seem to owe their existence to mere chance and the whim of the etching-needle! Does the antique Niobe surpass in depth of desolation and nobleness of expression that mother kneeling in the midst of her family before the French bayonets? Among these drawings, which admit of an easy explanation, there is one fearfully terrible and mysterious, the meaning of which, that we can dimly understand, fills you with horror and affright. It is a corpse, half-buried in the earth; it is supporting itself on its elbow, and, without looking at what it is writing, traces with its bony hand, on a paper placed near it, one word —Nada (nothingness) – which is alone worth the most terrible things Dante ever penned. Around its head, on which there is just enough flesh left to render it more frightful than a mere skull, flit, scarcely visible in the darkness of the night, a number of monstrous spectres, lighted up here and there by flashes of livid lightning. A fatidical hand holds a pair of scales, which are in the act of turning upside down. Can you conceive anything more sinister or more heartrending?
At the very conclusion of his life, which was a long one, for he was more than eighty when he died at Bordeaux, Goya improvised upon stone some lithographic sketches, entitled "Dibersion de España," and representing bull-fights. Even in these plates, traced by the hand of an old man, who had long been deaf, and who was almost blind, you can still perceive the vigour and movement of the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia. It is a most curious thing that these lithographs remind you very much of the style of Eugène Delacroix, in his illustrations to Faust.
In Goya's tomb is buried ancient Spanish art, all the world, which has now for ever disappeared, of torreros, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, robbers, alguazils, and sorceresses; in a word, all the local colour of the Peninsula. He came just in time to collect and perpetuate these various classes. He thought that he was merely producing so many capricious sketches, when he was in truth drawing the portrait and writing the history of the Spain of former days, under the belief that he was serving the ideas and creed of modern times. His caricatures will soon be looked upon in the light of historical monuments.
