They tell in the audio guides of the Prado Museum that Francisco de Goya was a pioneer of the anti-bullfighting movement . The great exhibition of drawings Only the will I have left over , inaugurated this November 20 on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Madrid art gallery, has served as an excuse to spread this fallacy that the Royal Academy of Arts of San Arts began some time ago Fernando It seems that several experts in the life and work of Goya, with Manuela Mena at the head, have ulcers when they remember that their head painter, the genius of Fuendetodos, was fond of bulls. Because, despite whoever weighs it, it was and much.

In addition to his well-known series of engravings entitled La Tauromaquia , throughout his fruitful professional life, Goya dedicated to this world paintings, drawings, tapestries, lithographs and prints, a rich production for a supposed anti-bullfighting and, what is certain, for a camera painter when Bullfighting was not considered for those years, much less, an academic subject. Goya performed many of these works for himself , even being an octogenarian, at the end of his life in Bordeaux. What was the need of the Aragonese person to self-inflict themselves with bullfighters when, according to El Prado, the artist himself hated them?

Almost newcomer to Madrid, in 1780, the one in Fuendetodos made an order for the Royal Tapestry Factory, which was entitled La novillada . In this work, a young Goya appears self-portrayed while playing with a bull and looks amused towards the viewer. Beyond the pictorial anecdote, there are many indications that the artist made his first steps as a suitcase and novillero before settling in the capital .

Since then, references to bullfighting issues in Goya's epistolary were rich , mainly in letters sent to his close friend Martín Zapater. Often, he, Zapater and Francisco Bayeu - brother-in-law of Goya - discussed who the bullfighter of the moment was, whether Pedro Romero or Costillares , both precursors of modern bullfighting. It seems nonsense that a supposed anti-bullfighting entered into debates about which killer bore the scepter of bullfighting, as if today an animalist would discuss whether he prefers to see Roca Rey or Pablo Aguado in the square. But these are vestiges that El Prado curators also overlook.

From those letters, we also know that Goya frequently went to different places, including Madrid, where, in 1801, he was a direct witness to the death of his friend Pepe-Hillo when he entered to kill a standing bull. The fuck impressed the artist so much that he decided to close his series of engravings on Bullfighting with the tragic stamp , making three different versions before choosing the final one.

Precisely, on the star-shaped staging of La Tauromaquia (1814-1816), current experts from El Prado say that it is "ambiguous" until "raising doubt about Goya's position about bullfighting", as if the Aragonese would have had to follow in the footsteps of Antonio Carnicero painting a festival unloaded of crudeness in case he wanted to defend it. According to Manuela Mena, his admired Francisco de Goya, a hypothetical furious animalist , manifested himself against the violence of men and in favor of the nobility of animals, ignoring that the Aragonese was always a faithful "photographer" of the lights and shadows of his time .

Although Manuela Mena and her close-minded colleagues did not want to delve into the matter, the Bullfight was a profoundly "enlightened" and revolutionary spectacle in which man stood, for the first time, at the very center of the stage; an ordinary man, born of the people, without the need for aristocratic or religious roots, an anonymous hero like the "melee" fighters of May 2, 1808. The architecture of the bullring was already, in itself, more " illustrated "than any theater or church, by distributing to the public around the equidistant point of the ring and the bullfighter. Goya, thanks to his deep knowledge of Bullfighting, also knew how to capture this rationality that haunted the apparent chaos of the Fiesta of the early nineteenth century.

The four bullfighting lithographs he made in Bordeaux in the twilight of his life (1824-1825) are an artistic and technical prodigy . In them, probably influenced by the horrors of the War of Independence, the artist focused on the brutalization of the mass, as if the bulls were a reflection of the popular feeling of Spain after the abolition of the Cortes of Cádiz and the end of liberal hope. Goya, from exile, could have chosen any other subject to capture his political feeling, however, he returned to the world that had fascinated him for life: Bullfighting. His servant came to affirm: "In two things he was my incorrigible master: in his fondness for bulls and in his fondness for Eva's daughters."

This last point also scales, by the way, to Commissioner Manuela Mena who believes that, in addition to anti-bullfighting, Goya was homosexual because of the correspondence he had with his faithful childhood friend, the aforementioned, Martín Zapater; and that if the artist married Josefa Bayeu, it was of pure interest. Possibly, after this exhibition in El Prado, the poor "Francho", as he was known in the capeas of his youth , will end up being the reason for some chariot of the Gay Pride 2020, becoming the emblem of the current "goodism" prevailing and The politically correct.

They already wish, by the way, many bullfighting businessmen of the 21st century to have detractors like Francisco de Goya, who spent half a life capturing in detail all the luck of bullfighting instead of jumping into the ring, as do the "antis" of now, "for free" and with the chest painted once the mulillas have dragged the bull. Because, to be anti-bullfighting, it seems obvious that Goya spent too much talent , time and money on the lines. Something does not add, Commissioners of El Prado.

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