The burial of the sardine

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The Burial of the Sardine (Francisco de Goya)
The burial of the sardine
Francisco de Goya
oil on wood
82.5 × 62 cm
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid

The Burial of the Sardine (El entierro de la sardina) is the title of a painting by Francisco de Goya . It shows the Madrid carnival festival of the same name on Ash Wednesday as a grotesque dance of death . The cabinet piece is owned by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.

description

The portrait format oil painting on wood with the dimensions 82.5 × 62 cm shows a dance scene in the middle of the turbulent fair Entierro de la sardina , which takes place every year in the form of a ritual burial of a sardine and symbolically the end of the carnival and the beginning of the Lent indicates.

The center of the picture shows a group of people dancing exuberantly, consisting of two female figures dressed in white and a darker male figure in long robes together in front of a dark, almost black banner on which a grotesque fool's face is grinning. The fool's banner, which is held up at an angle by a figure dressed in black with a black hat, dominates the work in the optical center . The two bright female figures are painterly precisely worked out and clearly stand out in color from the background, which was created in tinted colors. Both women have white make-up faces and red spots on their cheeks, their heads are wreathed - they could also be rigid masks that they wear. Behind the female figure on the left, who apparently happily stretches her arms to the sky, follows a dark devil figure who is wrapped in a kind of fur with a horned hood. The figure wears a skull-like mask and appears to be moving in sync with the dancer. The horned devil is followed counter-clockwise by a picador with a black, broad-brimmed hat, whose spear points towards the abdomen of the dancing girl. All figures perform a kind of round dance, which could be an iota .

From the left edge of the picture a dark bear with clawed paws and a wide open mouth rushes towards the dance group. In the foreground, at the lower edge of the picture, sit two couples, holding each other and watching the hustle and bustle, and at the lower right edge of the picture sits another single figure, which optically completes the indicated circle that surrounds the dance group. The bear, the devil figure, the standard-bearer and the dancer on the right form an imaginary triangle in shades of black that creates a light-dark contrast to the dancers.

Cutout

The rushing crowd in the background, on the other hand, is only indicated with almost glazed, fleeting lines and provided by the artist with white lights and black or red accents, suggesting flags or headgear such as veils, hoods and hats. Contrary to his usual attention to detail, Goya largely dispensed with elaborate representations. Most of the characters, including some children, are wearing masks , some clap their hands and seem to move rhythmically to the events in the foreground. The background is a blue sky, which is interrupted by a wall of white clouds, which forms the transition to the crowd. The imaginary horizon, roughly in the middle of the picture, slopes down to the right. In front of the sky on the left third a tree protrudes beyond the upper edge of the picture; on the left and right edges of the picture there are further trees, indicated with fleeting brushstrokes. The light falling from the left suggests late afternoon or early evening hours: The sardine festival usually begins on the Tuesday evening before Ash Wednesday. Overall, the painting has an “earthy” mood, in which dark green, brown and terracotta tones predominate. Since his scenes of the Napoleonic wars (cf. The shooting of the insurgents ), Goya has reduced the “beautiful colors” of his earlier genre pictures and increasingly used light-dark contrasts and brownish-gray tones away from the classicist ideal of beauty.

Classification in Goya's work

The painting's date of origin is generally given between 1812 and 1819 during or after the etchings Desastres de la Guerra , which were created against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars on the Iberian Peninsula from 1807 to 1814. The Goya expert Sarah Symmon dates the picture to 1816. The art historian Fred Licht describes The Burial of the Sardine as one of Goya's “occasional pictures in which the artist deals with subjects such as the sick, the mentally disturbed, fools, traveling people, drunks, gypsies and marginalized groups of society - people with whom Goya felt a certain solidarity. ”Other well-known works of this period are the flagellant procession (1812–1814) or the madhouse (1815–1819). Around the same time, Goya dealt with folk- related subjects in the bullfighting studies of the graphic series Tauromaquia .

Interpretations

In terms of the aftermath of the war, the picture is sometimes viewed as a foolish dance of joy about the liberation from French rule (1813), especially since the carnival in Spain was temporarily banned under Joseph Bonaparte . Despite all the exuberance, the work exudes a rather gloomy, ominous mood that comes close to a grotesque dance of death , while the restless background is reminiscent of the representation of a popular uprising and the composition resembles a battle painting. The absurdity of the subject is the perversion on which the festival is based: By symbolically burying the lent fish, the lent season is almost buried, although - according to the church - it is only just beginning.

In this context, the fools can be interpreted as vanitas symbols, especially since death is depicted as a fool's figure in traditional carnival scenes. The motif of the fool as a metaphor for transience, absurdity and the upside-down world fascinated Goya as well as all the topoi that deal with debauchery, intoxication , corruption or madness . In addition, the painter was always concerned with the question of the true identity of man, and so he dealt - in accordance with the age of the Enlightenment - in numerous works with the topics of deception and error, masquerade, change and disguise as well as delusion in the Political as well as religious context: In 1814 the court painter had to answer to the inquisition reintroduced by the reactionary King Ferdinand VII . Ferdinand, who was first celebrated after his liberation from the Spanish people, quickly dashed all hopes of the Enlightenment and relied again on the "old system" of nobility and clergy .

Goya: Caprichos No. 6 - Nadie se conoce , aquatint - etching , 1799

An earlier study by Goya on the “Carnival of Life” can be found in sheet no. 6 Nadie se conoce (Nobody knows each other) from Los Caprichos of 1799. From 1816 there is a drawing by Goya, also entitled Entierro de la sardina in which masked monks and nuns dance around a flag with the word "MORT (U) US" and papal insignia . The drawing, which is in the Prado in Madrid, shows clear deviations from the executed painting: The word "MORT (U) US" (Latin for "died" , "dead" ) is symbolized in the painting discussed here by the fool's face, Goya replaced the nuns with the two fun-loving young women and the monk with the dancer.

Goya: El entierro de la sardina , sepia drawing around 1816, Museo del Prado, Madrid

Both the picador with the spear and the bear push towards the women, which can be interpreted as a sexual innuendo or pagan spring rite. The bear, who crawls out of his cave at the height of the festival, is traditionally embodied by a disguised man who pounces on one of the dancing girls, whereby Goya's depiction of the doll-faced girls also suggests disguised men or prostitutes, which is the short-term Dissolution of social differences during the carnival season would come close. The figures all correspond to characters that traditionally lead the Spanish carnival parade: “Uncle Chispas” rolling his eyes behind a mask, the provocative girl “Chusca” and the wild, cloak-wrapped heartbreaker “Juanillo”. Goya has avoided an essential element in his work: the main character from which the title is given - the image of the “ Pelele ”, the straw doll that symbolizes the sardine.

Using the means of “courtly encryption” and allegorization , Goya will have practiced hidden criticism of the “dumbing down power of the church” in this foolish hustle and bustle as in the Caprichos , which he saw as mass hysteria, “in which the crowd blindly follows the false magic of Monks succumbs. ”At first Goya probably actually had the idea of depicting the triumph of religion over the carnival. On x-rays of the painting it became evident that Goya only added the big fool's face on the banner later and overpainted the original word "MORT (U) US" corresponding to the preliminary sketch. Instead of church insignia, there was foolish laughter.

Provenance

The painting was originally in the collection of the Madrid banker and art collector Manuel García de la Prada, whom Goya had portrayed between 1805 and 1810. The further history of the picture is unknown. De la Prada bequeathed the painting to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, together with the Goya works Procession of the Flagellants , The Madhouse , Bullfight and an unnamed inquisition scene. He described the works in his dated on January 17, 1836 Testament as "five paintings on wood, four of them are horizontal and set Autodafé the Inquisition, a flagellants -Prozession, a madhouse is and a bullfight; another, somewhat larger painting shows a mask festival. All are oil paintings, painted by the court painter Don Francisco de Goya, and highly praised by the professors. "

tradition

The burial of the sardine is a major festival in Spain and traditionally symbolizes the end of Carnival and the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday . The festival is celebrated differently from region to region.

Entierro de la sardina in Murcia

The focus is on a huge, colorfully decorated fish figure made of paper mache and fabric, which is carried through the streets in a procession by torchbearers, wailing widows and mourning guests in mourning clothes. The funeral procession is followed by decorated floats with musicians and dance groups, in whose entourage jugglers and fools do all sorts of jokes in folk masquerades. The festival ends in the early hours of the morning when the fish figure is finally set alight or in some coastal towns, such as Puerto de la Cruz , Tenerife , and on other Canary Islands , carried out on fire out to sea. With the burning of the figure there is generally a great fireworks display. The rite says that something must be destroyed so that it can be reborn with new strength and new things can arise , whereby the fish has the symbolism of the Christian liturgy . The burial of the fish lent seems a bit absurd, which is probably due to the original tradition in which pork halves were buried. From this a kind of ironic "counterplay" developed from "lean" and "fat" times.

One of the most traditional pageants is the Entierro de la Sardina in Murcia , which dates back to 1851 when a group of students began to imitate the masquerades they had previously seen in Madrid - and which are depicted in Goya's paintings. On the eve of the festival in Murcia, the “Testament of the Sardine” is read out in a public square, usually in front of the town hall. The actual parade is a mix of mythological carnival costumes and floats from which toys and sweets are distributed. The festival associations are under the signs of the various gods of Olympus .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jutta Held: Goya , 2005, p. 88
  2. ↑ Sarah Symmon: Burial of the Sardine. In: Goya. Phaidon Press, 1998, p. 276 , archived from the original on May 29, 2009 ; accessed on February 6, 2009 .
  3. ↑ Ingrid Hacker-Klier: Review of Fred Licht: Goya - The Birth of Modernity . Hirmer Verlag, Munich, 2001
  4. ↑ a b Jutta Held: Goya , 2005, pp. 90–95
  5. ^ The Grotesque in: Elisabeth Le Guin: Boccherini's Body . University of California Press, 2006, ISBN 0-520-24017-0 , p. 139
  6. ↑ a b c Goya and the Carnival . In: Daniel Arasse , Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, Bernd Carqué: The methodology of image interpretation . Wallstein Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89244-523-0 , pp. 209-212; see. Neoclassicism and Romanticism - Francisco de Goya. Retrieved February 12, 2009 .
  7. ↑ The portrait of Manuel García de la Pradas is now in the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines
  8. ↑ The Burial of the Sardine. Web Gallery of Art, accessed March 24, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Entierro de la Sardina en Murcia. Murcia turística, accessed July 22, 2010 .
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 20, 2009 .