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Saturn Devouring His Son

Francisco Goya · Romanticism & Landscape

Artist: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828)
Date: c. 1819–1823
Dimensions: 143.5 x 81.4 cm
Medium: Oil mural transferred to canvas
Location: Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

Saturn Devouring His Son is the most terrifying of Goya’s Black Paintings, a series he painted directly on the walls of his house outside Madrid in his seventies. It shows the Roman god Saturn, who, fearing that one of his children would overthrow him, ate them one by one.

A closer look

Saturn emerges from the darkness, his eyes wide with madness, gripping a headless, bloodied body and biting into its arm. Unlike earlier versions of the myth, Goya’s god seems horrified by his own act. The painting was never meant to be seen in public: it hung in Goya’s dining room. It has been read as an image of time consuming everything, of Spain devouring its own people in war and repression, or of the painter’s own fear of old age and death.

History of the painting

After Goya's death the house outside Madrid where he had painted the 'Black Paintings' directly on the walls changed hands several times. In 1873 the French banker Baron Émile d'Erlanger bought it and had the murals transferred to canvas by the Prado's restorer, hoping to sell them. They were shown at the Paris World's Fair of 1878 to little interest, and in 1881 Erlanger donated them to the Prado, where they now fill a room of their own; the house itself was demolished in the early 20th century.

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