Spanish painter Francisco Goya is certainly the artist who anticipated the phases towards which the history of European art was directed. His painting was made of liberty, a kind of poetics that allowed him to express the motions of feelings. The Spanish artist was not influenced by neoclassical schemes, and gave preference to inner descriptions, subjective facts rather than to parameters given by the outside. Francisco Goya began from himself, he questioned himself, he sank into his unconscious to find the answers and the needs of the spirit. The author tried to shed light and awareness on himself through feelings, although he did not fail to criticize the social and political reality of his time.
Indeed, many of Goya’s works express a certain propensity towards analyzing the social situation of Spain. Perhaps the most famous masterpiece that expresses this theme is “The Colossus”, an extraordinary work that represents the fantastic vision of a giant sat on a hill where the houses are reduced to dots. A masterpiece of the history of Spanish art, that has been read by many critics as an allegory of the Spanish resistance to the Napoleonic invasion. It is a shame that recent news has communicated something rather devastating. The experts of the Museo del Prado in Madrid have revealed that “The Colossus”, one of Francisco Goya’s most famous works, was actually painted by one of his apprentices, Asensio Julia.
Actually, this doubt is not entirely new, as in recent times both this canvas and “The Milkwoman of Bordeaux”, one of the artist’s later paintings, has stirred some perplexities regarding their attribution.
The question is why is the controversy about the authenticity of the two paintings resurfacing now? The answer is simple. The Museo del Prado is holding the great exhibition “Goya en tiempos de guerra” that is presenting two hundred masterpieces of the artist to the public. But there is a detail that has attracted international attention: two pieces are missing in the exhibition, “The Milkwoman”, but also “The Colossus”, highly symbolic work of the climate in which Goya testified the French aggression to his country.
The first doubts regarding the authenticity of the work had already emerged during some studies before the 1991 exhibition; further studies have found incongruities with Goya’s style, especially for some uncompleted figures.
“Goya never had hesitations in his traits while from the X rays different sketches of the Colossus have emerged underneath, which are different from the final version”, Manuela Mena explained, administrator of the sector of the Prado devoted to the Aragonese painter.
Naturally not everybody agrees with this theory. A convinced supporter of the authenticity of the Colossus was the previous manager of the Museo del Prado, Fernando Checa, who always rejected every doubt, comforted in his certainty by Nigel Glendinning, teacher of history of art at London University. Glendinning did not base his theory on the stylistic examination of the masterpiece but on the detail that the canvas was included in the inventory of Goya’s works compiled by his son in 1812, in which it comes as number 18. And radiographic investigations have identified on the canvas, under some re-paintings, precisely the number 18. Could his son have had a false inventory? However, Glendinning’s theory does not seem to have received many consents and has been denied thanks to the latest analyses. From the calligraphy of an inventory number that had the initials AJ, compared with a signature of Asensio Julia, experts agreed on the attribution to the assistant. From this last discovery the experts of the Museo del Prado have commonly reached the conclusion that we are not before a fake as commonly intended, that is a work painted intentionally in a painter’s style, years or centuries later. In this case, it is a product of Goya’s workshop, of the work of a particularly good assistant .
However, José Luis Diez, head of Preservation for 19th-century painting in the Prado has insisted on the fact that it is not a minor work simply because it was not done by Goya: the Madrilenian museum, according to Zuzaga, will now engage in reconstructing the personality of Asensio Julia, friend and disciple of the great Spanish teacher, as little is known about his artistic career and his biographical events. (translated by Giorgina Arcuri)