A Haunting Artwork Hidden from Public Eyes

Francisco Goya painted ‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ on the walls of his country villa in the 1820s. The mysterious image has haunted art historians since.

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (ca. 1819–1823). Collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid

A stooped, bare figure gazes outward with wild, protruding eyes while gnawing on the pallid form of his child. He grips the inert yet vividly illuminated body, diminutive like a puppet, with such force that his joints pale from the strain. Vivid crimson fluid gathers around his digits.

Crafted by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes from 1820 to 1823, this piece is titled Saturn Devouring His Son and stands as a somber highlight in Madrid’s Prado Museum. It ranks among the most unsettling creations in Western artistic tradition, portraying profound mental anguish intertwined with brutal savagery.

Peter Paul Rubens, Saturn (1636). Collection of Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The imagery appears rooted in classical lore. The deity Cronus, known as Saturn in Roman mythology, learned through an oracle that one of his progeny would overthrow him (having previously emasculated his own sire at his mother’s urging, Gaia). Alarmed by the threat to his dominance, Cronus sought to defy destiny by ingesting his newborns. His spouse, the Titaness Rhea, eventually deceived him by substituting a swaddled rock for their son, who grew to be Jupiter or Zeus. Zeus ultimately overthrew his father, confining him and ascending as the Titans’ ruler, thus realizing the foretelling.

Goya’s rendition might illustrate this tyrannical patriarch in the midst of his horrific act, though certainty eludes us. The artist provided no name or commentary on it. Indeed, he had no plans for it to be viewed by others.

This artwork belongs to a series of 14 pieces, now called the Black Paintings, which Goya applied directly to the interior walls of Quinta del Sordo, a rural residence he acquired in 1819, following his wife’s passing seven years prior. Situated near Madrid, the property — meaning “Deaf Man’s House” — was bought by the septuagenarian Goya, who had lost his hearing due to a severe ailment in 1793 (coincidentally, the name stemmed from its former deaf proprietor). Experts theorize that Goya, a proponent of progressive ideals, chose this secluded spot to separate himself from the oppressive regime of Ferdinand VII (he later fled Spain in 1824 amid political turmoil, settling in Bordeaux).

Francisco Goya, The Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) (1820–23) another of The Black Paintings. Collection of Museo del Prado, Madrid.

In this spacious rural dwelling, Goya produced these troubling compositions in the early 1820s, with motives that remain conjectural. Studies indicate he overlaid pre-existing idyllic murals on the walls. In their stead, he introduced these grim and despairing portrayals of senescence, mortality, and conflict, executed in muted tones.

These creations remained unknown to the wider audience until long after Goya’s demise in 1828. In 1873, Baron Émile d’Erlanger acquired Quinta del Sordo and had the murals relocated onto canvas. The transfer inflicted significant harm (archival images reveal finer details lost), and the Baron eventually gifted them to the Spanish government. They joined the Prado’s holdings in 1889, where they have been exhibited continuously. The museum attracts thousands daily (2024 marked a peak with over 3.4 million attendees), many drawn to Goya’s intense masterworks. Saturn Devouring His Son has achieved iconic renown, appearing in memes and even episodes of The Simpsons. Yet, despite its prominence, the painting remains enveloped in enigma. Below are three perspectives that could offer fresh insights.

The Grim Visage of Authority

Compelling evidence suggests Goya’s work draws from the mythic tale of Saturn consuming his child. He had explored the theme earlier in a 1797 red chalk sketch. In that piece, created more than two decades before, Saturn sits at a table, devouring one child — leg protruding from his mouth — while clutching another as if readying for the next. It’s an odd, almost grotesquely humorous scene, with Saturn glancing up from his feast with smug malice.

Goya probably knew of Peter Paul Rubens’s prior interpretation, his 1636 Saturn, depicting the god bending to rip into his baby with abandon. Commissioned for Philip IV’s Torre de la Parada and also at the Prado, Rubens’s version shows the deity biting rather than engulfing whole — a choice Goya echoes, though parallels cease there, as his version intensifies the horror.

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring One of His Sons (ca. 1797)

In the 1820s iteration, Saturn transforms from a calculating divinity into a figure so obsessed with retaining control that he savagely devours his kin. This version of Saturn is paradoxical, appearing cognizant of his deed’s abhorrence and pointlessness even as he proceeds. Goya achieves this through erasure of any backdrop. The nude, bent form materializes from obscurity, his physique simultaneously agitated and feeble, folding inward, fueled by his progeny’s essence. No longer a celestial being, he skulks in shadows. The scene conveys a poignant desperation, with Saturn peering at the observer, acknowledging his transformation into a abomination (obscuring the left eye heightens the stark glare of the right). He embodies a frantic individual, self-destructing through the annihilation of his heir.

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (circa 1819–1823). Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Although Goya attained notable acclaim during his era, he endured prolonged periods of strife and disorder. These shaped his output, from the renowned etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799) to The Third of May 1808, his poignant depiction of Spanish rebels executed by French forces. Numerous scholars posit that, after observing the ruinous consequences of Spain’s conflict with France, Goya grew disillusioned with governance. They interpret this Saturn as emblematic of rulers who sacrifice the nation’s young in their quest for dominance.

It Could Reflect Goya’s Personal Fears

Saturn also symbolized chronology and is frequently shown as an aged sage. Might Goya, in his seventies, have been pondering time’s destructive impact amid concerns about his impending end? Proponents of this view highlight that Saturn appears to consume an adult figure, not a babe, diverging from Rubens’s work and the legend. In 1819, Goya overcame another life-threatening malady, likely yellow fever. He commemorated this in Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta (1820), illustrating the weakened artist — convinced of his doom — tended by the physician, encircled by spectral visages. Isolated and hearing-impaired at Quinta del Sordo, did Goya ruminate on time’s toll on his form?

Francisco Goya, Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta (1820). Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

In his 1990 piece “The Mystery of Goya’s ‘Saturn’,” author Jay Scott Morgan proposes the artwork might encapsulate Goya’s paternal worries. Goya’s spouse, Josefa Bayeu, passed away seven years prior to his relocation. The pair, parents to at least five offspring, saw only Javier reach maturity. Morgan references Goya’s correspondence lamenting his wife’s losses and expressing concern for his sole surviving child. “I have a son of four who is so beautiful that people look at him in the street in Madrid. He has been so ill that I haven’t lived for all the period of his sickness. Thanks be to God he is now better,” Goya penned in 1789. He hoped Javier would excel as an artist, but that ambition went unfulfilled. Morgan theorizes Goya may have visualized how his protective instincts inadvertently hindered his son in this striking tableau.

Saturn Devouring His Son in the Quinta del Sordo, in 1874.Photograph by Jean Laurent. This painting was surrounded by a paper framework.

These intimate analyses are, naturally, hypothetical. This Freudian lens gains intrigue from art historian Juan José Junquera, who contends Goya did not author the Black Paintings. He attributes them to Javier. Junquera cites records indicating the home’s upper level was added post-Goya’s death. Since several Black Paintings adorned that floor, Goya’s authorship seems improbable. Junquera speculates Goya’s grandson Mariano attributed them to the master to inflate their worth. Nonetheless, such records were prone to errors, and the style and themes align overwhelmingly with Goya, per most experts.

Could It Be a Risqué Pun?

Although the Black Paintings are typically viewed as tormented expressions from a distressed creator, those intimately familiar with Goya question this narrative. “All you hear about these pictures is how he was crazy, melancholic, pessimistic when he made them. But he was actually an optimist with a great sense of humor, very rational and very clear in his mind, right to the end of his life,” Goya expert Manuela Mena shared with the Guardian in 2019.

Francisco Goya, La Leocadia (1819–1823). Collection of Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Mena detects glimmers of that cleverness amid the chaos. Justifiably so, as Goya placed this cannibalistic spectacle on his dining room walls, to oversee repasts. Opposite Saturn hung La Leocadia or The Seductress, portraying Leocadia Weiss — Goya’s housekeeper and presumed paramour — in mourning attire, positioned near what resembles a grave. Observers note the devoured form’s curvaceous contours suggest femininity over masculinity. Weiss, 35 years Goya’s junior (her daughter Rosario possibly his), tended him in his final days, prompting speculation that the image humorously captures their age-disparate liaison.