Blog sobre Francisco de Goya. Espacio de amistad que aglutine a todos aquellos amigos de Goya o de lo que representa Goya, a la manera de un club on line.

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The Portraits of Goya

Professor Julián Gállego published in 1978 his rather than bright ‘Self-portraits of Goya’ (Savings Bank of Zaragoza, Aragon and Rioja) on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Goya’s death.

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Since the beginning the very knowledgeable Professor defined that the self-portrait is one of the largest and most attractive painting issues. Carries with it as inexcusable conditions two counter qualities: the sincerity and the artifice (sic). Along its 86 pages -aside from the great annexes-, all a wonder of erudition and grace exhibition, develops the topic with enormous brilliance of who for some is the best writer that has given Aragon throughout the 20th century. Also for me is, at least, in his field of the fine arts in general and painting in particular.

Parses the question and rightly quotes to Ortega y Gasset when he says that Goya tends to give us the figure portrayed what is at the moment it appears. And that Goya painted “appearances” and, in that sense, ghosts. And that character of appearances does not remove them reality, as it does not remove either the portraits of Velázquez. (sic).

In regard with the above, it seemed incredible that thirty years later, in the superb exhibition ‘Goya and Italy’ (Museum of Zaragoza. June-September 2008. Curated Joan Sureda) that constituted a lesson of art of high level, and in which the mentioned curator knew how to relate influences, times, artistic modes and the philosophy of the artistic knowledge, from the academic Winkerman’s theory to the delight collector Infante Don Luis de Borbón and more, Sureda forgets Professor Julián Gállego -a very serious failure- and even while the chapter or paragraph XII in the catalogue and exhibition is dedicated to “the portrait”! But was not that the only striking failure of the author, who in an exhibition in which studies youth and first formation of Goya unknown conspicuously the zaragozanian Goya, disdaining his first training -former and later in Italy-, which is a lack of consideration.

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From October 2015 to January 2016 would have place at the National Gallery in London the exhibition ‘The Portraits of Goya’, very well widespread and in charge of Xavier Bray, with contributions by Manuela B. Mena, Thomas Gayford and Allison Goudie. And in whose literature opportunely quoted to Professor Gállego.

 

As the self-portrait does not leave to be a portrait, I come to the present of a new book that has been just published by César Pérez Gracia. “Portraits of GOYA”. CERTAIN books. Zaragoza, 2016. ISBN: 978-84-92524-85-3.

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It is 120 pages of a great catalogue of the close to one hundred and fifty portraits that Goya did throughout his life, detailing almost one by one and giving reason of each one and its relationship with Goya.

This concentrate of eloquence, good observation and some Aragonese sense of humour, turns out to be useful for its erudition and because it is also filled with goyesco arguments. Because also speaks of painting, procedure and completion, which is welcomed when in most writings qualified as canonical about Goya hidden us -by ignorance- what to paint concerns. Gets to the point and describes what is seen. Does not have invented or poorly brought youth Goya stories, but he skilfully explores what could certainly be and reaches us in what certainly was. He relates very well events, mentalities, the virtues and evils of the time and displays them with clarity and good sense. Without stopping in false myths, in little acceptable respects and stripped bare the truth of who, morally compelled to be example and conscience of a society, gave up the publican humility to settle for the mediocre pride of the pharisee.

Yes. Because César Pérez Gracia faces courageously the subliminal in the painting of the young Goya in the Zaragoza of his youth. Simply review by the hand of the author as stays on the portrait of the boy Ayerbe. Uncovers the goyesco game and shows to light the secrets of his intention. Enough to look and see the painting; is not imagination nor magic cheap, an argument too broken in the pen of so many historians supposed scholars who don’t know to look…

Thus it is a welcomed book because it is not politically correct, it lacks of ties still being drafted in the sullen, coward and pretentious Zaragoza, the great taster of bait and switch, and reaches the degree of jewel in the path of the great Julián Gállego, skilfully using the intelligent resource of the lightning glosses, so estimated by the Professor.

It is one of these books that we need to read and reread to be present much more at Goya, to learn from him and taste painting and intention, the formal quality and truth of the portrayed, without prudery, without superfluous details, without distortions nor white lies that are beside the point.

I congratulate the author with enthusiasm and encourage him to continue giving testimony of an exciting way to see our most remarkable genius art.

 

Gonzalo de Diego

Eleanor Axson Sayre and Zaragoza

In an excellent article written by César Pérez Gracia, published in Heraldo de Aragón last February, honoured the Lady Eleanor Sayre (1916-2001), granddaughter of US President Woodrow Wilson, died at age 85 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In that article was set out in detail the interest of certain personalities of high American culture by the art of Goya and the culture from the 50’s of last century, after the wake of the Harvard medievalists who discovered the Romanesque Monastery of Iguacel in 1928, in the valley of the river Aragon, near Jaca.

And that Eleanor Sayre visited Zaragoza in 1954 as Assistant Curator at the Boston Museum, consulting and copying letters of Zapater to Goya. Although then she knew nothing of Spanish she felt an immense voracity for learning the language of Goya. Multilingual and caught by Goya’s enigma, she got her Museum acquired about thirty of his drawings and made Boston’s a world reference in the knowledge of Goya.

RealGoya

“Loco pr. errar” Album G, 44. Lápiz negro. 191 x 146 mm. Boston. Museum of Fine Arts

 

On May 17th 2001 the New York Times reported that Eleanor Axson Sayre, who passed away the previous Saturday, May 12th, was an authority on the engravings of Goya and one of the first female curators in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Born in Philadelphia in 1916, after her studies in Art History at Bryn Mawr College in 1938, completed with two years degree at Harvard, her first job at the Yale University Art Gallery followed in the Lyman Allen Museum of New London, Connecticut, and at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Arete, Providence.

She joined the staff of the Boston Museum in 1945 as Assistant Curator of drawings and engravings, and finally as curator in 1967. She retired in 1984 and was proclaimed Emeritus curator of the Department of Images, Drawings and Photographs of the Museum and continued working in her office in a manuscript about the ‘Caprichos’ of Goya, until her health let did so.

Real Goya

“El Gigante”. Hacia 1818 (?). Aguatinta. 285 x 210 mm. Biblioteca Nacional. Madrid

Already in 1984, Eleanor A. Sayre initiated and organized the preparatory work for the shows in spirit of exemplary cooperation, and already in 1988 co-directed with Professor Pérez Sánchez, who was then Director of the Prado Museum, the magnificent exhibition ‘Goya and the spirit of the Illustration’, a reference exhibition and catalogue, which took place at the Prado Museum, Madrid (October-December), at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (January-March 1989) and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (May-July 1989).

Mrs. Sayre had contributed, in a capital way, to the proper conservation of Goya’s drawings in the Prado Museum and also maintained always a very close and fruitful relationship with the aforementioned Museum. The Spanish government, in a strict act of justice, awarded her with the Gold Medal of the Arts in year 1991.

But that visit to Zaragoza in 1954 was not the only one. There was at least one more. I am a personal witness of which Mrs. Eleanor Sayre made to Zaragoza during the exhibition ‘Academy Drawings (property of Aragonese Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, RSEAAP)’ held from October 17th to December 10th 1983, in the Centre of Exhibitions and Congresses of the Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Zaragoza, Aragón y Rioja placed in San Ignacio de Loyola Street.

Since 1976, I was responsible for exhibitions of the Caja de Ahorros (Saving Bank) and on that occasion, throughout the preparatory work and sample documentation, – in winter, spring and summer of 1983 – we requested the collaboration of specialist in Goya at the Prado Museum, Mrs. Manuela Mena. In the fantastic collection of the Economic Society we had catalogued some drawings that, in our opinion, were likely to be original works by Goya, as the possible nude self-portrait, among others.

 

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“Laocoonte (copia del yeso)”. Dibujo. 482 x 344 mm. ¿Francisco de Goya? RSEAAP

 

Mrs. Manuela Mena gladly accepted the invitation of the Caja de Ahorros and came to Zaragoza to know personally the originals. After her visit and study she confirmed us the authorship of Goya in the case of two drawings (the aforementioned possible naked self-portrait and a drawing, copy of an original of Batoni also in the collection of the Economic Society). She also said that in her opinion there were some more drawings than perhaps could also be attributed to Goya, as we did so recorded in the catalogue of the exhibition in relation to the Laocoonte, or the listed with number 16, of unknown author.

Well, the exhibition was opened on October 17th with huge host public assistance and began its way with remarkable success.

One day I do not remember exactly, phoned me Mrs. Manuela Mena to tell me that the engravings curator of the Boston Museum was in Madrid and she wanted to come to Zaragoza to know the exhibition of Goya drawings. Indeed, the agreed day, Mrs. Eleanor Sayre arrive straightly from the train station and showed her the drawings. She was delighted to see them, to check their excellent conservation and about the undeniable quality of them. In an impeccable Spanish, she made many and very interesting comments. She enjoyed a lot along within the few hours of her study and told us she was in Madrid, sponsored by the Kodak House, for live testing a new camera that could take pictures up to a meter in length.

I had the opportunity to share a coffee with Mrs. Eleanor, in a café opposite the building.  During the conversation I could appreciate the great wisdom of that Lady, her personal category, her elegance and careful education. A lady full of simplicity, lordship and sympathy. She talked me about her work in Boston, her very good relationship with the Prado and her enormous admiration for Goya. She invited me to ask for her if I was going by the Boston Museum, in which she would welcome me delighted and would show me the Goyas in it and was, in summary, a delight and a great honour to share that morning with her.

Before saying bye, suggested me directly that if we brought her those drawings to Madrid, she would make this large-format photographs and offered them free of charge the same for the Caja de Ahorros and the Economic Society. Unfortunately Mrs. Eleanor was leaving back to Boston in a week and it was not possible to carry out such operation because the drawings were exposed to the public. It doesn’t have to be a pity not to have any material testimony of that visit.

Serve these lines as endearing memories, personal gratitude and excited tribute to whom so loved Goya and all that so vital he represents.

Gonzalo de Diego

Places where Goya lived. Zaragoza I

In my opinion there is a very interesting question when we get closer to the work of an artist so known as Goya: the reconstruction of historic environments in which had emerged the works of his hand, today exposed in the major international museums. But bringing this issue to the birthplace of the painter, we can perhaps understand better his composition of place or the way of facing life and future events; his learning and the first external contributions that will influence him, more or less, onwards. And this issue is also interesting as a component of tourism in the birthplace of this kind of universal artists.

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It will be worth it in the case which concerns us here, no doubt to Zaragoza or Madrid also, or the same Bordeaux. The reason why in this blog, dedicated to Goya, intends to, as an essential aim, transmit and make understandable to society the figure of Goya, as well as the influence of his work and personality in the Spain of the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth century. As well as the significance and influence outside Spain and finally in the whole world.

If today, in June 2013, the word “Goya” in Google is mentioned approximately in forty and five million inserts on the Internet, this means that the interest in Goya in the world is certainly very high. And thus it will always be much better know the origin of the artist, his native land, customs and way of life.

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That courage! Etching, aquatint, drypoint and Burin burnisher. 158 x 209 mm.

And to begin with, our interest to show the general and artistic atmosphere of a city like Zaragoza, where Goya was born and lived until his departure to Madrid for the first time at age 17 and later alternating with Zaragoza between 1766-69, to emigrate permanently to Madrid “called by Mengs” as himself said, at the age of 29; i.e., how it was the city and its environment and above all how it looked like when the young painter came and went through the streets, monuments and institutions of his time. What still remains of that in a city, Zaragoza, which suffered so in the Spanish Independence War and, more particularly, in the terrible siege by the army of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1808 and 1809. City that would eventually be tragically destroyed by the neglect of their leaders and the devastating effects of a rampant and ignorant, ‘developmentalism’ that respected neither the reality of the historical heritage, nor give opposition with energy to disastrous property speculation in the second half of the 20th century.

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Retablo

In the school of Escuelas Pías, Francisco de Goya received his first teaching, sharing studies, games and amusement with what would be his best friend, Martín Zapater. The original structure of the building are preserved today an inner courtyard, a part of the cloister, the church and its façade, as well as the part of the facade of the school that follows the original line and is the attached to the entrance of the church.  This was built in brick with socket stone under the protection of the Archbishop Castro Agüero, in 1736. The interior is baroque and composite order. In shape of a cross and a single nave, the altarpiece is giltwood, mid-18th century, and is dedicated to Saint Thomas Aquinas, as a tribute to the figure of this Doctor of Church, patron of all universities and Catholic schools throughout the world.

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In the spirit of “Glory and Honor to Calasanz” in addition to that correct altarpiece, is clearly remarkable another lateral altarpiece dedicated to Saint Joseph Calasanz, with painting of the second half of the 18th, possibly by Ramon Bayeu, according to what says Professor Abbad Rios, and not collected by Morales Marín in his catalog, nor so does Anson. In another altar there is also a canvas dedicated to Saint Roque, Luzán’s former Aragonese school, who would be the first teacher of Goya.

Beyond his paternal home and the closest streets, in a small town as the Zaragoza of that time, certainly this was a first and interesting impression Goya lived on a daily basis in his childhood at the Piarist College and which is, among others, a-must-visit for the tourist who wants to follow the first ‘Zaragozanian’ experiences of Francisco de Goya.

Gonzalo de Diego

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