Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son, explained

By Francisco Goya, an artist well known for his work during the Romantic movement, Saturn Devouring His Son evokes emotions that likely oppose typical ideas of romance. The term Romanticism could be seen as a misnomer. Romanticism is an artistic movement that rejects the harmony and balance artists used in their painting during the Classical and Neoclassical movements of the 18th century. Accordingly, Goya embraced chaos and darkness in his work. Saturn was once a mural he painted inside of a two-story house known as “la Quinta del Sordo,” or “Villa of the Deaf Man”— just one of fourteen murals from the house, which are called the “Black Paintings.” Although Saturn went unnamed until after Goya’s death, it is commonly believed that the painting was his interpretation of the Greek myth in which Gaea predicted that one of Cronus’s children would eventually overthrow him, as he did his own father. In the myth, Cronus, who later became identified with the Roman god Saturn, swallowed each of his children soon after their birth. But unlike the myth, Goya’s depiction involves violently tearing a future god apart. Several theories on Saturn’s deeper meaning have gained traction over the years. These include the personification of the Peninsular War and the effects of violence on mass populations, a connection to the losses of several of Goya’s children—of whom only one survived—and even Goya’s own inability to cope with growing old as he fell victim to illness. Ultimately, the most important question could be whether Goya intended for this painting to enter the public eye at all, or whether it was meant to remain hidden in his home forever.