Goya, Daumier, and Rodin: Art Through the Ages

Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children: Myth and Political Allegory

The interpretation of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Children is rooted in the ancient myth of Saturn, who feared that his children would one day overthrow him and so devoured them one by one to eliminate that risk. Goya lived many centuries after this myth originated, yet his own contemporary situation mirrored the old story in striking ways. The powerful rulers of his era were frantically lashing out, trying to preserve their own power by destroying even the slightest perceived threat. The wild-eyed, frenzied expression of Saturn in Goya's painting — produced between 1819 and 1823 — reflects the turbulent reality of his time. The effects of the French Revolution had spread throughout Europe, and Spain had experienced the full force of Napoleon's conquests. Goya's painting captured the insane frenzy for power.

The Protestant Reformation had led to wars throughout the Continent over the previous two centuries (Laux). The French Revolution had produced immense bloodshed in an attempt to instill a new order based on Reason (Holsti). Napoleon had invaded country after country in response, and the Spanish Inquisition was attempting to root out crypto-Jews in order to protect both the country and the Church (Elliott; Roth). In short, there was chaos, suspicion, carnage, and revolution everywhere. Goya was reflecting that reality, with Saturn symbolizing Europe devouring its own children in a crazed effort to preserve itself. The image is disturbingly haunting — and rightly so. The times in which Goya lived were not easy for anyone.

Goya and the Artistic Movements of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The Baroque period followed the Renaissance. During the Renaissance, Christendom — that is, the West, or Europe — was united in one faith, though composed of several states. Toward the end of the Renaissance, a period in which the humanist style dominated, the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution occurred. Europe fractured as religious wars gave way to new doctrines and worldviews across the Continent. The Enlightenment and the Age of Romanticism followed. The Baroque emerged as a kind of counter-Reformation style: anti-Puritan, full of drama, and characterized by grand sweeping imagery and depictions of life's tensions. Goya's work belongs to this period, representing the horrors that arise when order and reason are lost. His The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799), for example, shows a man asleep at his desk as his thoughts and dreams transform into nightmarish shapes and shadows, reflecting the reign of chaos in Europe at a time when people seemed to have forgotten how to live civilly (Schaefer).

Like other Baroque painters, Goya used shade and shadow to convey meaning, illuminating the menacing aspects of his works — as seen in Saturn Devouring His Children. Painters such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio also employed deep shadow, though typically to highlight the human element of their subjects. Goya, by contrast, was drawn to what might be called the gothic dimensions of human society. In this respect, his work anticipated the Romantic Era, which reintroduced the concept of the gothic to Western culture — a concept that had already appeared centuries earlier in the gargoyles adorning cathedrals of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Goya was simultaneously reflecting enduring truths about society and nature while anticipating the Romantic movement's obsession with passion and irrationality.

Daumier's Impact on French Society in the Nineteenth Century

Honoré Daumier began his career as a caricaturist. He mocked the polite society that emerged in France following the destructive years of the French Revolution and its immediate aftermath. Daumier sympathized with the poor and exposed the hypocrisy of the upper classes, the industrial revolution, and the legal system. As he matured, he took up painting and adopted a Realist or Naturalist style. This approach allowed him to depict the poverty of the working classes in deeply evocative terms — as in The Laundress. His style and charm earned him a devoted following (Kleiner).

French society at the time was undergoing profound transformation. There was a strong push for greater democratization, and the working class was being exploited by industrialists. Daumier helped to shed light on this era by ridiculing those in power and drawing public sympathy toward the plight of working people. He himself died in poverty, so his life was genuinely consistent with his political sympathies. His cartoons and political commentary helped lay the foundation for broader criticism of the social and economic system of the times. Workers were demanding unions to protect them from industrialists; children were being forced into labor at an early age simply to help support their families; educational opportunities were scarce. Daumier helped to illuminate these issues and raise awareness about the pressing social problems of his era (Kleiner).