Goya. A Life in Letters. Edited and Introduced by Sarah Simmons. Translations by Philip Troutman

Translation by Francsco Mazzaferro
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN VERSION

Goya. A Life in Letters

Edited and Introduced by Sarah Simmons
Translations by Philip Troutman

London, Pimlico, 2004

Vicente López, Portrait of Francisco Goya, 1826, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/galeria-on-line

The cover ot the book. The drawing is a self-caricature of the author at the end of letter 244

"Goya. A Life in Letters" is the first full collection in English of the letters by Francisco Goya (1746-1828). The translation of almost all documents was made by Philip Troutman, but he was not been able to complete the work (he passed away in 1999). Sarah Simmons continued his work. Although some aspects are not entirely convincing, it is the most complete correspondence of the Aragonese artist. In Italy, a limited version of the core of the letters is available, published by Rosellina Archinto in 1990 and based on a Spanish version of 1982. The Italian version has the title Perché non scrivi, selvaggio? Lettere a Martín Zapater (Why do you not write, savage? Letters to Martín Zapater) [1].

The correspondence of Goya is really superlative. It includes official letters and missives of private nature. There is no doubt that the founding core of the documents is made up of the correspondence between the artist and Martín Zapater, his lifelong friend. Francisco and Martín were both natives of Zaragoza and had met in the course of their studies. In 1775, Goya moved to Madrid to seek his fortune; from there he started a dense correspondence that lasted for decades. Unfortunately, it is an incomplete correspondence, in the sense that we are not in possession of the letters sent by Martín to Goya, and that not all letters sent by the painter to the friend reached us (an example: the last letter we know is only dated 1797, while Zapater died in 1803). However, what remains is so full of vitality, exuberance, spontaneity, true sense of friendship that we really ask ourselves why Goya’s letters did not experience the universal success that has been achieved instead by other artists. The answer probably lies in the fact that they do not describe the most difficult years of the life of the Spanish artist, to which also corresponded the most expressive and hallucinated production of his paintings and graphics. In short, it is as if the correspondence of Van Gogh had stopped ten years before his suicide.

Francisco Goya, Portrait of Martín Zapater, 1797, Bilbao, Museum of Fine Arts
Source: Wikimedia Commons

And yet, we are not confronted with useless documents: Francisco’s letters give us a possibility not only to follow the artist's career from the beginning to the success, but also to much better understand the character and the figure of the Aragonese artist and to discover the germs of the nightmares that will populate his artworks in the years of maturity and old age.

On a personal level, there is a traumatic moment in Goya’s life: it is the disease, which stroke him between 1793 and 1794 and made him completely deaf. If this did not prevent him from continuing his successful career, becoming in 1799 the Court First Painter, one can imagine what it must have meant the absolute inability to feel anything for this man, who in his letters proves to be madly in love with life in all its forms. And it is not hard to imagine what must have happened in the mind of Goya when, after the invalidity, he experienced on the one hand Martín’s death and on the other one the arrival of the French, the beginning of the Peninsular War (1808 -1814), the return of the Bourbon regime with a highly inquisitive regime, from which, in fact, Goya decided to exile himself, moving to Bourdeaux in 1824, where he died four years later.

Francisco Goya, The Family of the Duke of Osuna, 1788, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya, Portrait of the Duke of Alba, 1795, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

“Kiss my arse” 

We should not expect that, in his letters, Goya explains his art: neither in the official letters (most of the time they are communications of a financial nature) nor in the personal ones: Zapater is not interested in art (if not the one of the friend) and is a businessman, who in turn will run a solid career in the environment of Zaragoza up to reach nobility and who will, along his entire life, occupy himself of the investments of the artist, but above all will finance Francisco’s relatives, remained in the province after the death of his father (his mother, but also brothers and sisters). The trust between the two, from this point of view, is total. Goya makes payments to relatives through his friend and sometimes recommends that the bill for what he owes is sent to him. The real beauty of the letters, especially those sent to Martín, consists of the freedom of their contents and their ruthlessness. They talk about any aspect, with colourful expressions that reveal complete confidence. "Kiss my arse!" (and sometimes something more) is a form of greeting, which is used of course with great warmth among them. It is like if the two friends played cards in a tavern and spoke about the most different topics. One sends chocolate to the other, and the latter reciprocates sending him sausages. Between Zaragoza and Madrid there is a continuous and mutual exchange of objects (chairs, tables, mules, and beds), favours and confidences that strengthen their friendship for decades. Goya has a great passion in common with Martín: they love hunting. He speaks often of his hunting trips, his dogs, regrets not being able to go with Martín, he is delighted of his preys. With his friend, he is more proud of the woodcocks he killed that of his paintings. The best gift that Martín can make him is a puppy retriever. Entire letters are devoted to how it grows, its progresses, its health.

Francisco Goya, Dogs on the Leash, 1775-7, Madrid, Museo del Prado
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya, The Stilts, 1791-1792, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya, Thieves's Raid, 1793-1794, Madrid, Castro Serna Collection
Source: http://goya.unizar.es/InfoGoya/Obra/Catalogo/Pintura/269.html

Francisco loves bullfighting, to stay among people, folk traditions; enjoys music and, more than royal concerts (which he attends, but on which he gives only short accounts - see letter 189), he loves folk songs, whose texts he sends to his friend, assuring him that he would like so much to let him feel how they sound (moreover, when Goya moved temporarily to Zaragoza for a commission in 1780, the only thing that he asked his friend to provide him was a place to sleep with a table, chairs, a bed and a guitar). Even before the deafness (that he must have even more suffered as trauma), he understands that the social role he has reached (he is royal painter from 1789) will prevent him from attending places where people sing: "I haven't heard them [n.d.r. he's talking about some folk songs] and probably never shall because I no longer go to the places where one could hear them, for I have got into my head that I should maintain a certain presence and air for dignity [...] that a man should have, and you can imagine that I'm not very happy about it" (letter 206).

The letters often look like real jokes: there are some in which Francisco covers the friend of insults, others where he treats him like an excellency and writes him as if he were addressing the king; one is written in French (because Francisco is studying it and wants to show his friend that he was able to learn something); one is in verses. The sketches that are drawn on it are a key element that characterizes the letters. And here the English edition edited by Simmons puzzles us. The sketches by Goya have all but simply decorative purposes: they are an integral part of the letters. A trivial example: some end with the expression "your brother is looking at you" and immediately display an eye drawn by Francisco. Apart from three exceptions (where the image appears in tables out of the text), the English collection does not show the images, but merely describes them. It is not clear why. [2] But obviously one loses the immediacy and freshness of the whole. In the last letter sent to Martín and received by us (dating back, roughly, Christmas 1797), a group of friends, including Goya, has met in a tavern to celebrate Zapater who sent him some money, announcing that he had won a lottery. The final farewell is given by a bent man seen behind, who, with pants down, show his ass to the reader, as a clear comments to Martín’s luck. It is certainly not the only example of jokes.

In December of 1790, Goya receives from Martín a letter in which, most likely, his friend drew the picture of his erect penis. The response letter begins like this:

"Jesus, what a God Almighty great cock! You must have traced round his outlines with your pen while your mind was on Miss Piety, but if you drew him free-hand then you are obviously a natural draughtsman, and the Lord knows he deserves a frame as much as a Saint deserves two candles. What a pity he cannot be exhibited to the public, so that he coul be tried out and the lady he fits best can get to keep him" (letter 206) 

Francisco Goya, The Nude Maja, 1795-1800, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: https://www.museodelprado.es/uploads/tx_gbobras/P00742.jpg

From the letters to the artistic work

Freedom is total. In another letter, Francisco tells Martín that he just masturbated. We do not report this for a pure taste of gossip, but because then the artist goes on to say that her aunt had told him years before (as a teenager) that this was the spirit of the devil taking possession of him: "but now? well now, now I have no fear of Witches, goblins, ghosts, thugs, Giants, ghouls, scallywags, etc, nor any sort of body" (Letter 168). The reference to the occult and the world of demons, which then will populate the art of Goya during the 1800s, takes form, even not too subliminally (in a couple of occasions the artist wrote to Martín that he is a painter-demon).

At a closer glance, in fact, what we have said so far, while not directly related to the works of the painter, recalls in many ways the content of his art: the world of hunting, for example, is one with which Francis animates the first cartoons made for the royal house and intended to be translated into tapestries in the Royal Factory of Santa Barbara in Madrid (it is the first assignment received by Francisco). In his works, the popular element is essential; eroticism is above all part of his albums. The reading of the correspondence allows us then to grasp the themes that we will find in contemporary works or later. We cannot help but to see the "demoniac" in relation with his famous "black paintings".

Francisco Goya,  Los Caprichos Series N. 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya, Cannibal Preparing their Victims, 1800-1808, Besanςon, Museum of Fine Arts
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Without wishing to be fake psychologists, it is clear that something contributes decisively to bring out the dark side of Goya. From this point of view, disease and deafness appear decisive. Actually, it is strange that this had not occurred before: six of the seven children who he had from the (beloved) wife had died still in swaddling clothes; the number of miscarriages was innumerable. Yet, similar events, that now seem us to be unbearable, appeared as natural incidents of life at that time. Infant mortality was appalling. Honestly, it is striking to read from Goya that he excuses himself with Martín of the delay in the preparation of a suit because his wife (who was seamstress and manufactured clothes for Francisco’s friend) had just had a miscarriage, like if it were something of lesser account. Deafness, however, closed Goya inside a wall of silence; it forced him to resign from teaching at the Academy because he was not able to understand what his pupils said, inhibited him from listening his beloved music, and obliged him to learn sign language and read lips.

Francisco Goya, The Third of May 1808, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Francisco Goya, Two Old Men Eating Soup, Madrid, Prado Museum
Source: http://www.eeweems.com/goya/old_men_eating_900.jpg

Official letters

Official letters are undoubtedly less significant, but not without any interest. They witness in particular two chronologically very distant episodes from each other. The first relates to the years 1780 to 1781. In September 1780, Francisco is involved in a collective work involving two other painters: Francisco Bayeu and Ramon Bayeau. To be note, Francisco Bayeu was, at the time, Spain’s most famous painter and both were his brothers-in-law. Goya had married their sister Josefa in 1773. The three take the commission to decorate with frescoes the cathedral of El Pilar in Zaragoza. Goya takes over the dome and the pendentives under it. Soon, however, something goes wrong. The Cathedral Chapter were unhappy with the work of Goya and asks Francisco Bayeu to amend the mistakes of the younger colleague. Goya, who has just become academic in Spain, refuses in the name of freedom of invention that is up to the artist. The story will continue for some time and, in essence, will end up in a dishonourable way for Francisco, who will be yes paid, but in order to disappear. In this context, however, it assumes a special importance the memorandum which Goya sent to the Chapter on March 17, 1781, where, in addition to restate the occurrence, the artist defends and supports the freedom of the artist in front of the customer (a not absolute freedom, provided that the subject is agreed together, but which must allow the painter to decline the work according to his own inclinations).

Between January and February of 1801, however (Goya has already become First Painter of the Court), the artist is sent to check the results of some restoration operated on works belonging to the Spanish crown (263-264 letters). Here emerges the total opposition of Francisco against any cleaning or restoration of the paintings: “I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches... For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time... No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters... and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting".

NOTES

[1] The Archinto edition is based on an original Spanish published in 1982, including only the letters (but not all of them) to Zapater.

[2] However in the Italian anthology edited by Archinto images are present.