The expressive body in Goya's Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent.

Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], painted by Francisco Goya (1746-1828) in 1788, is one of the most astonishing works in an oeuvre replete with remarkable images. In the decade and a half since its inclusion in Robert Rosenblum's survey of nineteenth-century art, this canvas has become widely known among scholars and their students. Rosenblum, following a line of interpretation that dates back to the middle of the nineteenth century, uses this painting to support a symptomatic reading of Goya's art, which he describes as "the most sharply accurate mirror of the collapse of the great religious and monarchic traditions of the West."(1) Goya scholars also have tended to view the work as marking a significant turning point, albeit within a more circumscribed frame of reference, for it is in this picture that the fantastic makes its initial appearance in the artist's work.(2) Absent from both of these interpretive models is any suggestion of how the painting might have been understood at the time of its creation.

As is common with Goya's art, there is little in the way of documentary evidence around which to construct a context. The one known document is an invoice dated October 16, 1788, in which the artist requests payment from the duke and duchess of Osuna for "two pictures that he has painted, representing passages in the life of Saint Francis Borgia for the new chapel that has been constructed at your expense in the Cathedral of Valencia."(3) The paintings were intended for the side walls of a chapel honoring the sixteenth-century saint, who had served as third father general of the Society of Jesus and was a famous ancestor of the duchess of Osuna. The Osunas were among the artist's most important patrons over the next fifteen years, commissioning a wide range of works, beginning with a pair of portraits of the duke and duchess in 1785 (G-W 219,220).(4) In 1787 Goya delivered a series of seven pictures depicting "rural themes" for their country house on the outskirts of Madrid (G-W 248-54). The following year he painted a large-scale family portrait (G-W 278) and undertook the paintings depicting Saint Francis Borgia, after whom the Osuna heir had been named. In the late 1790s the Osunas commissioned a group of small-scale scenes of witchcraft for their country house (G-W 659-64), and they purchased four sets of the Caprichos in January 1799. Around that time, Goya again painted the duke's portrait (G-W 674), and in 1805 he executed a stunning portrait of their daughter, the marchioness of Santa Cruz, dressed in Empire fashion (G-W 828).

Although nothing is known of the terms of the Borgia chapel commission, the works by Goya would have been intended to complement the main altarpiece, painted by one of his artistic rivals, Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819).(5) Dedicated on October 10, 1788, Maella's canvas (in situ and in poor condition) portrays The Conversion of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, an event that occurred when he saw the decayed corpse of the Empress Isabella, wife of Charles V, at her burial and suddenly realized the transitory nature of earthly pleasures. Goya's picture for the left wall of the chapel, entitled Saint Francis Borgia Taking Leave of His Family (G-W 240), narrates the result of the religious awakening depicted in Maella's altarpiece. The duke, having been widowed in middle age, bids farewell to his relatives as he departs to join the Jesuit order upon the maturity of his eldest son. The work is anecdotal and sentimental in character, with Francis and his heir embracing on the steps of the family palace at Gandia while other members of the family and household look on.(6) The emotional reactions of the assembled figures, enacted through individualized physiognomies, lend the canvas an air of pathos, while the richly painted brocades and draperies bring to mind the rich surfaces of Giambattista Tiepolo, who had worked in Spain as first court painter to Carlos III from 1762 until the former's death in 1770.(7)

In contrast to this costume piece, Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent, executed for the right wall, presents the viewer with a truly amazing mystical drama. The saint is dressed in a simple priest's robe, his head encircled by a ring of divine light that echoes the form of the window behind him. Holding a crucifix in one hand, the other raised in a gesture of astonishment, he stares spellbound toward the figure laid out before him. The dying man's agonies are inscribed unmistakably and with striking frankness in his naked body: the rigid limbs, heaving chest, sunken eyes, slightly open mouth, and grasping hand all suggest his suffering, and these torments are underscored by the agitated sheets that partially conceal his flesh. In addition to the two protagonists, four demonic creatures hover in a cluster behind the sinner, their infernal origin indicated by the flames surrounding them. Frank Heckes has pointed out that the subject depicted here is not an exorcism, as had been assumed previously, but rather a damnation that is narrated in vivid detail in an eighteenth-century account of the saint's life written by Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuego and entitled La heroica vida, virtudes, y milagros del grande S. Francisco de Borja. The text, which Goya's painting closely matches, describes how the carved image of the crucified Christ held by Francis, having realized that the soul of a particular dying man could not be saved,

... detached its [the Crucifix's] nailed right arm, and placing its hand in that profusely bleeding lacerated wound in its chest, withdrew a fist filled with blood, and hurled it with indignation at the frowning, denigrated face, saying "Since you scorn this blood, which was shed for your glory, let it serve for your eternal unhappiness." Then that pitiful man, with an awful, blasphemous shout directed against Jesus Christ, gave up his soul, convulsed by a horrid moan, and it was turned over to the infamous ministers of fire and fright.(8)