The shipwreck (Goya)
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| El naufragio |
|---|
| Francisco de Goya , 1793/94 |
| Oil on zinc sheet |
| 43.2 × 32 cm |
| Arango Collection, Madrid |
El naufragio , The Shipwreck , is a painting by Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) from 1793/94. It belongs to a series of six so-called cabinet pieces of a tragic character that the artist had painted on zinc sheets. It describes the dramatic scene of a shipwreck as a metaphor for the helplessness of people exposed to the forces of nature. The picture is now part of the Plácido Arango collection in Madrid .
description
The painting is a portrait-format work that Francisco de Goya made using the technique of oil painting, not on canvas, but on zinc sheet; it has the dimensions of 43.2 by 32 centimeters. A complete provenance has not been handed down. In 1900 the picture was with a Marquis of Castro Serna in Madrid, then with a Marquis of Oquendo and then in today's collection.
Some human figures are shown trying to save themselves from the crashing waves of the sea onto the rocks on the shore. In the upper right corner there are dark clouds, while in the lower left corner the light foaming waves break on the rock. A sloping cliff looms threateningly from the left into the center of the picture. Underneath, the remains of the ship can only be guessed at. The wreck itself is not clearly visible, only two drifting barrels indicate this. Since the ability to swim was not widespread at that time , a person in the foreground on the left is depicted as if he were drowning from exhaustion. Other castaways help pull each other onto the rocks. The main character in this painting is an upright woman in torn clothes painted in bright colors, who stretches her arms up in despair to seek divine help. In front of her, an unclothed man lies on his back. Goya has often depicted people with similarly raised arms in different meanings in his work. In this picture, this pose is a symbol of the hopeless situation of the castaways. In this picture, Goya uses the weight of the plausible soaked clothing of this woman to partially bare her breast. Her gaze is directed to the sky, precisely to one in the vanishing point of perspective, on the edge of the retreating black storm clouds, the faint orange-colored loosening up, the vague sunlight of which theatrically illuminates the figures on the rocks and in the water. The upper edge of the dominant cliff on the left edge of the picture also leads in the extension to this sunny-orange cloud gap.
interpretation
The painting should be understood as a metaphor for the helplessness of humans in the face of the forces of nature. From an artistic point of view, the landscape remains at a distance from the fate of people, because human fates are naturally irrelevant to them. This conception of Goya's picture already points to later Romanticism and its aesthetics of the sublime postulated in art history . In this work the painter depicts the situation of the people, in contrast to other of his composiciones , as deeply hopeless. His strength is shown in this work in the fact that he has assigned each person in this theatrical production their individual place in the struggle for survival. The portrayal of naked , desperate people, in this picture the man lying on his back in the foreground, occupied Goya in the years after an illness that finally left him completely deaf and repeatedly induced him to leave the genre-like Spanish local color in his painting. Naked people can be recognized in his paintings Interior de prisión ( prison interior , around 1793) and Corral de locos ( court of the mad , 1793/94).
Exhibitions
- 1900: Colección Marqués Castro Serna. in Madrid
- 1928: Pinturas de Goya. Museo del Prado , Madrid (April to May)
- 1983: Goya en las colecciones madrileñas. Museo del Prado, Madrid (April to June)
- 1986: Goya nelle collezioni. in Lugano (June 15 to October 15)
- 1992: Goya. in Zaragoza (June 18 to October 18)
- 1993/94: Goya. El capricho y la invención. Museo del Prado, Madrid (November 19 to February 15)
- 2000: Goya's Realism. in Copenhagen (February 11th to May 7th)
- 2005: Goya, prophet of modernity. Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin (July 13th to October 3rd)
- 2008: Goya e italia. in Zaragoza (June 1st to September 15th)
literature
- Esperanza Guillén: Naufragios: imágenes románticas de la desesperación. (= Biblioteca azul. 4.) Ediciones Siruela, Madrid 2004, ISBN 84-7844-758-X , pp. 79/80. ( online , Spanish)
- Werner Busch: 1793. Or the discovery of one's own abyss. In: Roland Borgards: Calendar of Small Innovations: 50 Beginnings of a Modern Age between 1755 and 1856: for Günter Oesterle. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, ISBN 3-8260-3364-7 , p. 123/124. ( online )
Web links
- Un naufragio. on fundaciongoyaenaragon.es (Spanish)
- Frederic Malagelada i Benaprés: Goya: 'El naufragio'. In: El País of January 2, 1997. (Spanish)
- Jacques Terrasa: Le naufrage et ses métamorphoses dans l'œuvre de Goya. on etudesromanes.revues.org (section 14, French / Spanish)
Individual evidence
- ^ Rüdiger Zill: Shipwrecked. on jp.philo.at (PDF, image description)
- ^ Esperanza Guillén: Naufragios: imágenes románticas de la desesperación. P. 79/80.
- ↑ a b Manuela B. Mena Marqués in the catalog of the exhibition Goya - Prophet of Modernity. Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8321-7563-6 , p. 132.
- ↑ Werner Hofmann : Goya - From heaven through the world to hell. Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-54177-1 , p. 52 f.
- ^ Exposición de pinturas. Museo del Prado, Madrid 1928. ( p. 60, online, PDF ).
- ↑ Goya en las colecciones madrileñas. Amigos del Museo del Prado, Madrid 1983, ISBN 84-300-9033-9 .
- ↑ Goya: el capricho y la invención: cuadros de gabinete, bocetos y miniaturas. on museodelprado.es
- ↑ Un naufragio. on fundaciongoyaenaragon.es (Spanish)