Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819
Francisco Goya
Mixed technique, wall, canvas · 143.5 x 81.4 cm
One of Goya's private, unshown Black Paintings, savage and unrelieved.
Goya's nightmarish god tears into his own child, wild-eyed in the dark. One of the private 'Black Paintings' he made straight onto his walls in old age, it is among the most disturbing and unforgettable images ever committed to paint.
What you're looking at
Goya painted this straight onto the plaster wall of his own dining room, on a house outside Madrid, in his seventies and deaf. Nobody was meant to see it. It was cut from the wall and transferred to canvas in the 1870s, half a century after his death, and the transfer damaged it — parts of the lower half were lost or repainted, so what hangs in the Prado is not exactly what was on the wall. The eyes are the thing: not rage but a kind of appalled panic.
On a Frame TV
About 1:2 — a tall narrow picture that no 16:9 screen can hold. Matted file. Very dark and genuinely disturbing; it is not living-room art, and it is remarkable in a dim room if that is what you want.
Museo del Prado · Visit it in Madrid →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
More like this
Other works in the collection, starting with Francisco Goya.
