Part 5

To this appeal Goya returned what we may describe as a characteristic letter. This epistle has been published in Spain, but no translation has hitherto appeared in England. The letter is as follows:--

MEMORIAL OF GOYA TO THE BUILDING COMMITTEE.

D. Francisco de Goya, Member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando, respectfully shows: That after having put the works of his profession before the public, namely, the paintings just unveiled at the Church of Our Lady of Pilar, his attention had been called to the opinions he hears expressed, containing a criticism prompted by a principle other than that of justice, or governed by the authorised rules of art, which only should form the opinion regarding the work; and although he cannot believe that ill-meant prejudice has gained access to your rectitude, or that you could be led away by impulses little in accord with reason; yet the honour of a professor is a very delicate thing; opinion is what sustains him, all his subsistence depends on his reputation, and when that is obscured by even a light shadow, his fortune is gone; therefore Nature warns him to take care of it by using all the defences within his reach, and to omit the least would be to gain a slight advantage by abandoning the greatest treasure the Creator had entrusted to him.

These principles, accompanied by a sense of wounded honour, the expositor hopes his explanation will make evident to your benignity.

D. Francisco Bayeu asked that the work in the domes might be done by his brother and the expositor, but it was on the understanding that the latter should do one of the parts by himself, as Bayeu himself agreed, considering that the degree of an honoured member of the San Fernando Academy, acquired by the work which had won great renown for him in Madrid, in addition to the work for H.M., would not admit of his absolute subordination to another professor without detriment to his honour. The expositor might be wrong in this, but his error would have the approbation of D. Francisco Bayeu himself, who agreed to it, and was a trustworthy witness of the success that might be expected; and also that of the chief Presbyter Allué, to whom through some people in the city he had manifested the same opinion, to which he agreed.

The expositor feeling sure of said promises, with all good faith in them, proceeded with the Study or Design, and as he wished to be on good terms with D. Francisco Bayeu he took it to him, and received his entire approval: he came with him to this city: he began his work by consulting him regarding the place where the principal façade should be put; the expositor gave way to Bayeu’s opinion. He presented the design to you, who approved them; and in executing them he has only enlarged them.

Taking into consideration these harmonious dealings of the supplicant with D. Francisco Bayeu, which created no motive for resentment, and were governed by the principles and rules prescribed in the first and only conversations regarding the matter, who could think that the expositor had been wanting in respect to Bayeu? There are those who think so, because when the work was well in hand, they wished to make him understand that the agreement with Bayeu was that he should interfere as much as he liked with the expositor’s work, and that the latter should obey him as a subordinate in execution, placing of figures, style, colouring, and so forth; in a word make him a mere executor and mercenary subordinate; but as this was in direct opposition to what had been agreed, it would have been discreditable to his honour to yield, as he would be losing what his merit had won for him, and he could not therefore so humiliate himself, for he knew that the previous offices were sufficient, and that similar ones if continued would not make them anything but his own production. D. Francisco Bayeu’s warning to you that he would not be responsible for his part of the work, only shows that his object was to create a want of confidence that should cause coercion to be exercised, which was justly resisted, for doubt as to skill and success sat ill on D. Francisco, who knew quite well of the honours acquired by the expositor in Madrid, both from the Royalties and from all who had seen his productions, all executed by himself without the slightest direction from any one.

After this, things were artfully circulated against the conduct of the expositor, concerning his temper, proceedings and dealings with Bayeu, he being accused of hauteur, pride and stubbornness. Thereafter malice prepared the blow, long premeditated, of first creating personal disaffection, and then disaffection with his work; as shown by the reception of his work in the dome of the Cathedral of Our Lady. The criticism passed by some persons can only be attributed to this, because all its merit is unobserved and only the defects suggested by caprice or ignorance are sought.

He has suffered with resignation the insults to his honour, he has had the patience to see that the same Bayeu who impaired his credit with insinuating words, and the deceitful complaint that he was responsible for the success of the work, and that he would have to give an account of the confidence placed in him, and that the supplicant was depriving him of this satisfaction because he would not allow him to correct or alter his productions; on other occasions defended the expositor, exalting his merit, acknowledging his skill and the correctness of his painting.

The insinuations of Bayeu have led to the conclusion that the expositor came to this city as a mere subordinate of his, and that notwithstanding this absolute dependence, his proud spirit would not submit to asking for instructions from D. Francisco, even on the ground of friendship and relationship. Two entirely false propositions, which are the cause of all the supplicant’s trouble, because regarding the first he has already told you about the agreements that preceded his coming to Zaragoza, and regarding this and the second, D. Francisco Bayeu cannot deny that, as the result of those agreements, the expositor executed the studies and designs in Madrid, showed them to him, received his approval, and no fault was found. The studies are the complete work, with the same figures, colouring and arrangement to be observed, and the work itself an entire copy of them; and if they passed his examination in Madrid as an act of condescension on the part of the supplicant, emanating from his desire for peace, why, if as he says he was responsible, did he not then point out the defects he might have noted? He did not do so; then what is to be inferred from his having concealed them, if he noticed them? Obviously, and no dissimulating artifice can hide this, it may be gathered that his object was for the expositor to be in error, receive indignant public censure, and lose all the merit and status won by his work. But not wishing to believe such malevolence, because other proofs would be required of it, it must be admitted either that he found no defects in the studies or designs, and therefore the painting on the dome, which is the same, has none, or that D. Francisco was most culpable who, knowing of them, said nothing and allowed them to be copied.

The expositor has never departed from that friendly subordination, nor attempted to oppose D. Francisco Bayeu with the proud spirit of which he is accused; a proof of this is what has been said about the designs; another, the placing of the principal façade; and, lastly, the many visits he paid him at his own house, even though they were not returned. On being informed that the Chapter wished Bayeu to inspect the work on the dome, he arranged for him to do so, which he did, accompanied by the chief Presbyter Allué, and in his presence admitted and acknowledged the perfection of the work, saying that what he had been informed was not true; he also saw the designs for the triangles, and approved of them.

In face of all this, the expositor finds that the same bitter opposition which he had thought would cease, still continued, because the sense of truth may be suspended but not extinguished, but seeing that there is no hope of staying the torrent of provocations that insult his honour and fame, and that an honoured professor cannot stand for ever against the opposition of his enemies, whose only object is to work him ill; notwithstanding that he thought he must finish the work on the triangles, he has at last been undeceived by the letter which the chief Presbyter Allué had just sent to him, of which he sends you a complete copy. After the calumnies he has had to endure, the slights and contempt with which he is treated will not permit him to continue to expose himself to some greater misfortune. He now humbly shows, and at the same time sets forth that he has heard that some figures were to be altered in the dome, and although the expositor cannot be sure that you will allow yourselves to be guided by the declamatory voice of the ignorant public, or the opinion of rivals, the right he has to defend his honour leads him to forestall you. Before a daub is put in the Church that will obscure and deprive it of merit, and leave a permanent witness of the ignorance which is a reproach: which is now the only thing in the matter that interests him, and regarding which he appeals to you--because the will of the owner in his own house does not let go the reins of liberty to such an extent, merely in order to exercise his authority, as to permit without cause, and quite uselessly, great detriment to another on a point so delicate as honour--the expositor thinks the best way to appease the want of confidence he presumes in others and to assert his own opinion, is that a person expert in the art, authorised in his profession, and whose opinion would be impartial, should minutely inspect the work, and when his criticism detects his unskilfulness and error, or testifies to his sufficiency and skill, he will watch with indifference any mutilations executed. Therefore he humbly begs that you will arrange for the work in the dome to be seen by one of the members of the San Fernando Academy, one of the most renowned, as D. Mariano Maëlla or D. Antonio Velazquez, at the expense of the expositor, and after careful inspection his declaration be accepted as testimony.--Zaragoza, March 17, 1781.

FRANCISCO DE GOYA.

Upon the receipt of this letter, which may be left to speak for itself, the worthy and sorely tried Allué seems to have invited the mediation of Father Salzedo, who was, perhaps, the only man to whom the irascible Goya might be expected to listen. Salzedo wrote the painter a long, earnest epistle, in which he appealed to his better judgment and prudence, cited instances of humility in the life of Christ for his guidance, and demonstrated the practical advantages that would be derived from doing his work to the satisfaction of the Building Committee. The good father did not hesitate to tell his friend that he had taken up a wrong attitude towards his brother-in-law and the Cathedral authorities, and plainly exhorted him ‘with all generosity and Christian charity, to submit your studies to Bayeu’s opinion, in order to please God by your humility, edify the public, and give pleasure to your friends.’ And he adds in conclusion: ‘My dictum, as your greatest admirer, is that you submit to the demands of the Committee, have your studies taken to your brother’s house, and say to him in the best manner possible: This is required by the Chapter--here they are; examine them to your satisfaction, and put your opinion in writing, doing this as God and your conscience shall dictate, etc. And then await the result.’

The foregoing letter was dated March 30, 1781. On April 6, Goya wrote a conciliatory note to Allué, promising to make fresh studies in consultation with Bayeu. Eleven days later the Committee approved the new designs and expressed their pleasure at finding him reconciled to his brother-in-law. But the truce, for such one supposes it to have been, did not last. From a minute in the report of the Building Committee’s proceedings on May 28, it is recorded that Goya, in a ‘not very courteous’ manner, had told Allué that he was only losing his reputation in Zaragoza and desired permission to return to Madrid as soon as possible: ‘The Committee resenting this further affront, resolved: First, that the Professor be paid for his painting. Second, that under no circumstances would he be permitted to continue to paint any more in this Church, but that this need not deter the Director from giving some medals to his wife, in virtue of her being the sister of D. Francisco Bayeu, who was so worthy of this and other considerations from the Committee, by reason of his skilful work in this church.’

The source of the trouble was the failure of the Committee to accept Goya at his own estimate, which was certainly the true one, as the superior of Bayeu. The young painter doubtless did his best to follow the advice of Father Salzedo, but he wore the robes of humility with a bad grace, and was impatient of ignorant and pedantic criticism. His position had become untenable. The painter received his payment, his wife accepted her medals, and they left Zaragoza for Madrid in June 1781.

Goya was indulging no empty boast when he intimated, in his memorial to the Building Committee, that his renown in Madrid was widely acknowledged. He was no sooner back in the capital than the Conde de Florida Blanca sent him a royal order to paint one of the pictures for the Church of San Francisco el Grande. The favoured minister also presented him to the Infante don Luis, the brother of the King and husband of Maria Teresa Vallabriga, who at once conceived a great liking for the painter. He spent a month at the palace of Arenas de San Pedro, and was entertained with great hospitality, while he executed portraits of the Infante’s family. He also painted for the Consejo de las Ordenes several devotional pictures for the Calatrava College at the Salamanca University. In his leisure hours he worked at his picture in the Church of St. Francis. This work was not completed until November 1784. The pictures were ceremoniously unveiled on the 8th of December, in the presence of the King and his court. The occasion was a triumph for Goya. Other pictures had been painted by Bayeu, Mariano Maëlla, Gregorio Farro, Antonio Velazquez, Joseph del Castillo, and Andres Calleja. But their work was eclipsed by the composition in which the magic brush of the Aragonese represented San Bernardino de Siena. The saint is shown with a crucifix in his hand, standing on a rock, preaching, by the light of a brilliant star, to the wonder-filled King Alfonso of Aragon and his court.

Great was the admiration which this picture won for the artist, but, as was usual in Spain, he experienced much difficulty in obtaining payment for his work. In April 1785 we find Goya, Farro, and Castillo memorialising the Conde de Florida Blanca for pecuniary acknowledgment of their labours, explaining that they had each spent two years in making sketches and studies and in the execution of their several pictures, and pointing out that they are obliged to gain their livelihood with their work and ‘have no income or assistance, like others who have the good fortune to serve his Majesty.’ This memorial was despatched with a covering letter from Antonio Ponz, who emphasises the fact that the painters are in need, and hopes that their request will be complied with, ‘in order that these poor men may not lose heart and that reward shall hearten them to fresh work.’ Three months late Florida Blanca arranged with the general directors at the post-office to hand the artists ‘six thousand reals for the present until something else is arranged.’ This payment is duly noted on the memorial, and a later marginal order, presumably in the Count’s handwriting, reads: ‘Pay another 4000 reals to each, although the pictures are nothing wonderful, but theirs are the best.’ This grudging eulogy was in striking contrast with the enthusiastic praise bestowed upon Goya’s pictures for the Salamanca College by the Consejo de las Ordenes, who instructed Jove-Llanos to assure the artist that he was ‘singularly satisfied with the care and diligence with which he had finished the paintings and with their eminent merit.’

In the year of his return to Madrid Goya’s father died, and the painter sent for his mother and his brother Camilo to join him. He obtained for Camilo a chaplainship at Chinchón, but his mother soon wearied of the unaccustomed noise and bustle of the city and retired to Zaragoza, where she lived on a pension of five reals per diem provided by Goya. The artist at this time may have found some difficulty in providing for his household; for his family, if not long-lived, was numerous, but it is unlikely that he ever felt the pinch of poverty. We can well believe that he was insistent in obtaining the reward of his labours, especially when he was working for princes who, in his view, were living a life of gilded pauperism, and the stress which Ponz lays upon the needs of these ‘poor men’ is far removed from the attitude assumed by Goya. In the letter, in which he applies for payment, he does not plead for a dole in relief of his poverty, but demands the remuneration which is justly due to him. This is the only recorded instance of his being in financial straits. From this time his career is one of eventful and interrupted but assured success. Fame and fortune attended him on either hand. In 1785 Andreas Calleja died, and Goya succeeded him as deputy director of the Academy of San Fernando, with an annual salary of twenty-five doubloons. Four years later, on the death of Cornelio van der Goten, Charles IV., who had just succeeded his father Charles III., appointed him a Painter of the Chamber, with a salary of 15,000 reals, which was increased in 1799 to 50,000 reals a year, with the rank of first painter to the King.

In this period of his greatest prosperity, Goya was courted not only for the sake of his art, but also for his personal qualities. He was popular with men, while women eagerly contended for his favour. A revolutionary, he became the friend of the King, while the Queen and the Countess of Benavente delighted in his companionship. He went from palace to palace and from fête to fête, observing, working, studying, revelling in the life by which he was surrounded and in which he played a full part. This lover of freedom could breathe in an atmosphere of corruption; this son of the soil could play the courtier with a will. ‘If we are to understand his genius rightly,’ says C. Gasquoine Hartley, in _A Record of Spanish Painting_, ‘all contradictions are solved when we realise that he was an onlooker at, rather than an operator in, many incidents of his life.’ This half-hearted attempt to condone the irregularity of his life at this period is at variance both with what we know of Goya’s temperament and with the facts. He was an actor as well as an interpreter of the scenes which he represents, and many of his pictures, which are regarded as biting satires of the follies and vice of his age, are quite as plausibly explained as the expression of personal animus and party feeling. Certain people have discovered in Goya a moralist after the style of Hogarth, using his brush in the sacred cause of morality, to expose the vices of his time, laying bare the baseness of his contemporaries in order to inspire contempt and horror of their conduct, stigmatising the habits of the court of Charles IV., and castigating the hypocrisy, ignorance, and immodesty of the men and women who surrounded the royal family. But while in the later works of his mature age he employed his brush and needle to this purpose, it is more probable, as Lafond concludes, that under Charles IV. and Maria Luisa, Goya drew and engraved, as La Fontaine wrote his fables: for the pleasure of producing them, from the necessity of multiplying them, not troubling himself about questions of morality or of the lessons which his pictures should teach. ‘The truth is,’ says his French biographer, ‘that, mixed up in the intrigues of the Court and involved in personal quarrels, he takes the part now of one, now of another, using his pen to scratch his adversaries of to-day who are his allies to-morrow.’ In all his works he imbued the subject with the quality of his thought as well as with the charm of his colour and the skill of his draughtmanship. Of all the artists of his class, says the _Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_, none put into their studies more meaning and personal opinion. If he painted a scene he attached to it a proverb or a significant ejaculation; if he produced a portrait he left upon the likeness his opinion of his model; if in many cases it amounted to a positive caricature, he could no more help seeing his subject in that guise than his subject could avoid so appearing to the artist.

With regard to Goya’s personal life at this period it is not necessary to say much, but it would seem to have been consistent with our knowledge of him and of his surroundings. Lafond reminds us that his wife bore him twenty children and continued to love him in spite of his endless infidelities. Mr. Rotherstein declares that while it would be idle to pretend that he was faithful to his wife, it is undeniable that he was deeply attached to her during her lifetime. With the single exception of his devotion to the unfortunate Duchess of Alba, says the same writer, his intrigues seem to have been as much caprices on the part of his sitters as his own. But these caprices were, as it has been said, endless. ‘We have only to look at the master’s self-portrait,’ writes Richard Muther, ‘at this man with the bull-neck and full, sensual lips, to understand that the countless stories which got about on the subject of his relations with the women of high society in Madrid were not all inventions of the fancy. Goya must have been a terror to all their husbands. In all the most aristocratic salons the women were at his feet; and perhaps they appreciated the difference between this sturdy man of the people and their decadent lords and masters. In a word, Goya at this time not only painted Rococo, but lived himself to its full the wild passionate life of that Rococo period.’ And again, in the _Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_, we get the shrewd and common-sense conclusion that ‘Goya was a man of his age. He neither aspired to the category of an ascetic nor opposed the customs and tendencies of his time, and his age being one of transition, without fixed principles, he accommodated himself to its duties and its weaknesses, never for a moment failing in his domestic obligations, yet not refusing those outside favours that presented themselves to him.’