Time to Re-open the Debate about the Reattribution of Goya's Colossus?

Abstract

In 2008 the Prado Museum took the decision to remove from the Goya canon a well-known painting, long accepted by specialists as an authentic work by the artist, generally called El Coloso (The Colossus). The work was initially reattributed to Goya's friend and pupil Asensio Julià by the Museum, although more recently their website has given it to an ‘unknown follower of Goya’. A number of art historians in Britain and the United States as well as in Spain itself, wrote articles rebutting the initial arguments put forward by the Museum for reattribution, and the present writer was an active contributor to these debates in learned journals and the popular press in Spain. Since the Prado has failed to reconsider its position, or attempt to demolish the arguments put forward against its own theories, the problems surrounding the debate are summarized in the present article, fresh doubts about the Museum's case and its mode of procedure are presented, and new arguments in favour of Goya's authorship advanced.

Keywords:

• Goya
• The Colossus
• paintings
• prints
• war
• signatures
• reattributions

Notes

1 Pedro Fernández Durán was eighty-four years old when he died on 23 July 1930, so was presumably born in 1846. His father had inherited the Perales title in 1831, and the Tolosa title on the death of don Pedro's grandfather in 1833.

2 Archivo del Museo del Prado (AMP), Caja 99, Legajo 16.09, expediente 11, acta n° 284 of 3 October 1930; and Sánchez Cantón's undated MS report on the proposed bequest.

3 Newspaper cuttings from AMP files, mostly of unclear provenance and supplied by a cuttings service, El Argos de la Prensa. These included extracts from El Imparcial and La Época for 18 June 1931.

4 See Nigel Glendinning & Jesusa Vega González, ‘¿Un fracasado intento de descatalogar El Coloso por el Museo del Prado?’, Goya. Revista de Arte, 326 (2009), 61–68 and ‘En torno al Coloso atribuido a Goya una vez más’, Goya. Revista de Arte, 329 (2009), 294–99; Jesús García Calero, ‘Tormenta perfecta en el Prado’, ABC, 1 February 2009; Anna Grau, ‘Colosal suspense sobre el Prado en el mundo’, and Sarah Symmons, ‘El Coloso’, ABC, 10 June 2009, p. 66.

5 Archivo Histórico de Protocolos, Madrid (AHPM), P° 24.968 (1841), f. 247 includes inventories with valuations drawn up in 1821 and 1834–35 relating to Miguel Fernández Durán.

6 Conceivably the portrait of ‘the Marqués de Tolosa, one and a quarter varas high by one vara wide’ (1.04 x 0.84 metres, relatively close to the measurements of Goya's original which was 1.12 x 0.78 metres) in José Bueno's valuation (AHPM, P° 24.968, Garamendi, 1841, f. 254).

7 Rafael Gil, Asensi Julià. El Deixeble de Goya (València: Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 1990), Nos 9 and 10.

8 AHPM, P° 16.160.

9 Interview with Antonio López, ‘Yo soy de Velázquez’, Público, 9 January 2011.

10 Interview with José Manuel Pita Andrade, ‘Pita Andrade respeta la decisión del museo, “pero no la comparto” ’, ABC, 1 February 2009.

11 Interview with Philippe de Montebello, ‘Internet nos obligará a reinventar los Museos’, La Vanguardia, 16 March 2009; José Milicua ‘La autoría de El Coloso se resuelve con un vistazo’, Público, 25 April 2009, quoting the ex-Director of the Louvre.

12 José Milicua, ‘La Historia del Arte siempre está en crisis’, Público, 7 April 2011.

13 Interview with Rafael Alonso, ‘El médico personal de los grandes maestros de El Prado’, Público, 3 December 2010.

14 Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón, ‘Cómo vivía Goya. I: El inventario de sus bienes. II: Leyenda e historia de la Quinta del Sordo’, Archivo Español de Arte, 74 (1946), 73–109. Goya's mezzotint now known as El Coloso, whose authorship is not in doubt, was also originally called ‘El Gigante’ according to Goya's grandson Mariano (cf. Tomás Harris, Goya. Engravings and Lithographs, 2 vols [Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1964], II, 50, No. 29).

15 Museo del Prado, Catálogo de los cuadros (Madrid: Blass, 1952), 277–78, No. 2785.

16 Mercedes Agulló y Cobo & María Teresa Baratech Zalama, Documentos para la historia de la pintura española, 2 vols (Madrid: Museo del Prado, 1994–1996), II, 157–61.

17 Nigel Glendinning, ‘Goya, ¿romántico?’, Goya 250 años después (Zaragoza: Ibercaja, 1996), 67–76, and especially pp. 75–76.

18 Nigel Glendinning, ‘Goya and Arriaza's Profecía del Pirineo’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 26 (1963), 363–66; also ‘El Coloso de Goya y la poesía patriótica de su tiempo’, Dieciocho, 27:1 (2004), 47–57. The first two editions of the poem were advertised in the Gaceta de Madrid on 9 September 1808, p. 1150 and on 20 September, p. 1192.

19 Agulló y Cobo & Baratech Zalama, Documentos para la historia de la pintura española, I, 171–72.

20 Vicente Poleró y Toledo, Catálogo de los cuadros del Excmo Señor D. Enrique Pérez de Guzmán, Marqués de Santa Marta (Madrid: E. Cuesta, 1875).

21 Jeannine Baticle & Cristina Marinas, La Galerie espagnole de Louis-Philippe au Louvre, 1838–1848 (Paris: Ministère de la Culture/Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1981), 272, annexe 25.

22 Conde de Toreno, Historia del levantamiento, guerra y revolución de España, 5 vols (Madrid: Imprenta de Don Tomás Jordán, 1835–1837), II, 171–73. The details of the succession of the Perales title can be found in Augusto de Burgos, Blasón de España. Libro de Oro de su nobleza. Reseña genealógica y descripción de la Casa Real, la grandeza de España y los títulos de Castilla, 6 vols (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1853–60), V, 82–83.

23 In No. 55 the letter ‘Y’ in Goya is reversed and the same letter is inverted in No. 80, while the whole signature is upside down in No. 10. I am grateful to Dr Jesusa Vega for pointing out these and other discrepancies.

24 Cases in point are the small painting of the Holy Family acquired by the Prado a few years ago, which photographs suggest was signed ‘Goya’ at the lower edge, below the point in the Virgin's skirt where her left foot lies, and the group portrait of the Condesa de Montijo and her daughters, where a signature is visible on the lower edge, immediately above the word Duque in white lettering in the photograph taken by Moreno at the time of the 1900 Goya exhibition and reproduced in Goya 1900. Catálogo ilustrado, ed. Jesusa Vega, 2 vols (Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2002), II, 85.

25 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Catálogo alfabético de los documentos referentes a Títulos del Reino y Grandezas de España conservados en la Sección de Consejos Suprimidos, 3 vols (Madrid: Patronato Nacional de Archivos Históricos, 1951–54), I, 708.