La Tauromaquia (Goya)
La Tauromaquia is a series of aquatint etchings on the subject of bullfighting that Francisco de Goya y Lucientes created between 1814 and 1816.
Bull representations at Goya
Goya worked on the topic of bullfighting over and over again in the course of his artistic career. One of the earliest works of this kind is a self-portrait with a young bull on a box of carpets; In 1793 he sent the Royal Academy among other things a series of eight pictures showing the life stages of a fighting bull, and towards the end of his life he created the picture series The Bulls of Bordeaux .
The Tauromaquia
In the years 1814 to 1816 Goya etched the 40 sheets of the Tauromaquia . He published 33 of them himself, the remaining seven were later added to other publications in the series. The images are each 35.5 cm wide and 24.5 cm high. Goya's hope that this series of pictures on the art of bullfighting would appeal to the public and generate high income did not come true. The Tauromaquia is not a 1: 1 illustration of the work Carta historica sobre el origen y progresos de las fiestas de toros en España by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín (1777) and, despite its title, not directly on the Tauromaquia (1796) by José Delgado alias Pepe Illo , the artist depicted here, from an often unfamiliar perspective, sometimes dramatic situations in bullfights that really took place. He often only hinted at the audience and the arena; in the foreground and often in close proximity is the battle between animals and humans.
The series begins with the painting Modo con que los antigos españoles cazaban los toros á caballo en el campo (How the old Spaniards hunted bulls on horseback in the open field). In the center of the picture is a bull, which a mounted hunter in the presence of several helpers on foot has just stabbed a lance in the neck. A rocky landscape is indicated in the background. The title of the second picture, Odro modo de cazar á pie (Another way of hunting), refers to the first. It shows two Moors fighting the bull on foot. Goya oriented himself here on the portrayal of Moratín, who put the primitive forms of rural bullhunting at the beginning of the development of bullfighting. According to an exhibition catalog, the depiction “full of lust for murder” underscores “human aggression towards the wild animal”.
In the following pages the nameless hunters are replaced by well-known bullfighters. On sheet 5, for example, the Moor Gazul can be seen as a picador , who is said to have lived at the court of Seville in the 11th century , while on sheet 10 Emperor Charles V , who in 1527 killed a bull in the arena of Valladolid with a single blow of his lance , on sheet 14 the student of Falces who danced elegantly around the bull without taking off his coat, on sheet 18 one of the most famous bullfighters of the middle of the 18th century: Antonio Ebassun, known as Martincho, sat on a chair and Attack with tied legs by a bull. Juanito Apiñani is similarly daring on page 20: He jumps over the charging bull with the help of a pole. The South American Mariano Cebellos can be seen as a riding bullfighter on page 24, on page 27 Fernando del Toro, who is facing the bull with his pike . Sheet 28 shows the bullfighter Rendon at the moment when the bull has bored a horn into the chest of his mount. Rendon would later be killed fighting this bull. Pepe Illo, actually José Delgado y Alvez, was killed by a bull on May 11, 1801 in the Madrid arena . This scene can be seen on sheet 33.
Nameless “heroes”, on the other hand, can be seen on sheets of paper depicting individual instruments or customs in bullfighting. For example, sheet 7 illustrates the origin of the banderillas , which return on sheet 31 in the form of fire banderillas, on sheet 12 the mob may try their hand at the irritated bull by various means, on sheet 25 a fighting bull that has not proven itself becomes the Left to dogs.
Sheet 21, on the other hand, shows the short-term triumph of a fighting bull that jumped into the restricted seat section of the Madrid arena on June 15, 1801 and impaled or trampled people there. Goya's composition leaves the left half of the picture almost empty. On the right, turned to the right, stands the bull above its victims, a man across the horns.
Classification and interpretations
After Los Caprichos and Los Desastres de la Guerra, La Tauromaquia is the third graphic cycle that Goya created. He worked it out in a time of political resignation and restorative tendencies under Ferdinand VII . After the French occupation, the absolutist monarchy and the Inquisition regained greater influence. This may have been one reason why Goya turned away from critical caricature and turned to the more cultural-historical topic of bullfighting. The Tauromaquia was based not only on Moratín's historical account from 1777, but also on a textbook by José Delgado that appeared in 1796. If one interprets Goya's bullfighting depictions politically, the bull could be seen as a symbol of Spain . The battle scenes would then be a symbol of the resistance against the French troops.
Web links
- GOYA, Francisco (1746–1828), LA TAUROMACHIE (1816) at www.unesco.org
- Tauromaquia on www.realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen, Francisco Goya. 1746-1828. Am Aufbruch der Moderne , Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-38365-3954-8 , pp. 83-89
- ↑ Silke Schuck (ed.), Goya. Grotesque and Carnival , Galerie Stihl, Waiblingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-9817596-1-7 , p. 61
- ↑ Silke Schuck (ed.), Goya. Grotesque and Carnival , Galerie Stihl, Waiblingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-9817596-1-7 , pp. 60–69
- ↑ Silke Schuck (ed.), Goya. Grotesque and Carnival , Galerie Stihl, Waiblingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-9817596-1-7 , p. 7