Images of Suffering: Goya's Disasters of War and Blake's Illustrations for the Book of Job

IMAGES OF SUFFERING: FRANCISCO GOYA’S DISASTERS OF WAR AND WILLIAM BLAKE’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BOOK OF JOB

Christopher Christenson

Bethel University

February 2015

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Introduction

Fransisco de Goya and William Blake, who we regard today as two of the

greatest artists of the Romantic era, each produced a provocative set of engravings

towards the end of his life. Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra [The Disasters of War]

and Blake’s Illustrations for the Book of Job are both contemplations on human

suffering, specifically unjust suffering, and our response to it. When placed in

dialogue with one another, these sets of engravings unearth new dimensions in their

interpretation and consequently in our own thinking about suffering. This paper

will explore suffering and response through four themes inherent in both the

Disasters and Job: oppression of the innocent, the physical body, vengeance, and

cyclical oppression. In addition to examining each artist’s investigation of these

themes, this paper will seek a basis for hope in the sentiments that Goya and Blake

develop towards suffering.

Grounds for Comparison

Goya and Blake were alive during many of the same years—Goya was born in

1746, eleven years before Blake, and died in 1828, one year after him. For each,

these sets of engravings were among the last of their work and it is thought that

they were both working on them at a similar time: the late 1810s and early 1820s.

Despite this, their respective publishing dates were almost 40 years apart. Blake’s

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Job was published in 1825 just before his death but Goya’s Disasters were first

published posthumously by the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1863.1

During their lives, both artists witnessed political turmoil in Europe and the

clash of competing ideologies. They lived to see two democratic revolutions, one in

America and one in France. Both became disillusioned with the Church and its

marriage to corrupt authority.2 They each became social commentators in their own

right. Goya, a harsh critic of the Spanish Inquisition and aristocracy, published his

Los Caprichos in 1799—a political and social satire that got him arrested by the

Spanish monarchy. Blake made use of his own invented mythology to predict his

political and ideological hopes for the future in America: A Prophecy (1793) and

Europe: A Prophecy (1794).

Goya and Blake were not merely political prophets; they also shared a

distrust of the Enlightenment’s glorification of pure Reason. They believed that a full

understanding of the human experience embraced not only rationality and logic, but

emotion and physicality as well.3 These sentiments are exemplified in such works as

Goya’s The Madhouse (1816), where human irrationality is on display, and in Blake’s

Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), which embraces both good and evil as a

necessary part of human existence.

1 Michael Phillips, “The Printing of Blake’s ‘Illustrations of the Book of Job,’” Print Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2005) and Jesusa Vega, “The Dating and Interpretation of Goya’s ‘Disasters of War,’” Print Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1994). 2 Antonia Vallentin, This I Saw: The Life and Times of Goya (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1949), 118-‐161 and Michael Davis, William Blake: A new kind of man (Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 1977), 33-‐61. 3 Ibid.

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A final parallel to consider is the significance of printmaking as their method

for the Disasters and Job. Both artists were wielding a highly democratic medium.4

Through printmaking, multiple “originals” could be made from the artists’ etched

plates, and could subsequently be sold at affordable rates. For Goya, this would have

allowed the Disasters a wide circulation among the public, giving it a certain

journalistic quality. Similarly for Blake, this would put his Job series—originally

done as a set of watercolors—into the hands of the layperson as a book of printed

engravings. Through the accessibility of their work, both artists acknowledge the

universality of human suffering. We all experience it and we all have a need to make

sense of it in some way.

Innocence Oppressed

For Goya, one of the most gut wrenching parts of war is its implications for

the innocent. In the Disasters, time and time again Goya uses women and children as

symbols of innocence. Plates 9, 10, 11, and 135 are some of the most brutal of the set

not because of any horrific carnage—which Goya does not hesitate to show us at

other times—but because they are images of rape. In each of these, the woman who

appears in the foreground is wearing a white dress. Paul Bouvier recognizes this

earlier (in plate no. 7) as “a symbol of innocence and vulnerability.”6 In no. 9 [Fig. 1],

a woman claws helplessly at the face of an attacker and struggles to free herself

from an unwanted embrace. In no. 10 [Fig. 2], soldiers force themselves upon

4 Christopher Rowland, Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2010), 15. 5 These are titled “They do not want to” (no. 9), “Nor do these” (no. 10), “Or these” (no. 11), and “Bitter presence” (no. 13). 6 Paul Bouvier, “’Yo lo vi.’ Goya witnessing the disasters of war: an appeal to the sentiment of humanity,” International Review of the Red Cross 93, no. 884 (2011): 1116

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several women and we see a glazed look of shocked horror on the woman in the

foreground. A woman in no. 11 [Fig. 3], arms caught in the rough grip of a soldier, is

forcefully splayed backwards into a position that exposes her belly and forces her to

drop her child.7 In no. 13 [Fig. 4], Goya uses high visual contrast between the pale

skin of the woman’s face and the darkness of the soldiers’ bodies to highlight the

agony of the victim.

Though there is debate as to how much of the Disasters is rhetorical and how

much is representational, the woman in no. 11 may also be the personification of an

ideal.8 Goya may be using her to quote the tradition of the female with bared breasts

representing truth, beauty and goodness. Her vulnerability, and the child lying

helplessly on its back, reminds us that it is the innocent who suffer the greatest loss

when war violates these essential virtues.

Blake’s interpretation of the story of Job in the Illustrations is complex. He

criticizes Job and his wife for their materialism, legalism and pride9 but at the same

time uses shepherd imagery to symbolize their innocence.10 In engraving no. 2 [Fig.

5], a scene depicting God and his angels in heaven and Job and his family on earth,

we are first introduced to this shepherd motif. This is an image of Job’s family in

their natural, pre-‐trial environment. In the two bottom corners we see Job and his

wife with shepherds crooks and hats watching over their slumbering sheep. Blake

7 In the background a church stands idle. Perhaps Goya is suggesting that it has no power to help here. See Bouvier, 1117. 8 Nigel Glendinning, Goya and His Critics (Hew Haven, CT: Yale, 1977), 179. 9 Rowland, 15-‐16. 10 S. Foster Damon, Blake’s Job: William Blake’s Illustrations for the Book of Job (Hanover, NH: Brown,

1966), 12.

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scholar S. Foster Damon describes this as, “Job and his wife… in the pastoral state of

Innocence.”11

The shepherd theme returns in engraving no. 6 and then again no. 7. In no. 6

[Fig. 6], Job’s body is covered with boils and we see Satan standing triumphantly

over him, pouring out a fresh vial of suffering. Job’s wife sits by his feet and covers

her face—for the first time she is separated from her husband.12 At this moment of

intense physical oppression we see in the bottom left corner the “broken sheephook

of Innocence.”13 In no. 7 [Fig. 7], Job collapses against his wife in defeat as three of

his friends enter the image from the left, their hands raised in horror and disbelief.

In the bottom two corners we see, one last time, Job and his wife with their

shepherd staves. “They are still shepherds of Innocence,” says Damon, “enduring

their sorrows of Experience with resignation.”14

The Physical Body

Throughout their engravings, Goya and Blake are meticulous in their

depiction of human anatomy and both artists use the physical body as a vehicle for

the visualization of suffering. In the Disasters, critic V. S. Pritchett points out that,

“Goya’s realism marries fury, insanity, corruption, whatever the state or passion is,

to the body.”15 There is a stark tension in the work between the beauty of the human

form, and the lengths to which it is violated.16 There is also a deep symbolism at

11 Ibid., 14. 12 Ibid., 22. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., 24. 15 Quoted in Glendinning, 180. 16 Glendinning, 179.

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work that forces us to contemplate what war does to us psychologically and socially.

Philip Shaw writes that, “Goya’s interest [is] in the opening up of the body, in the

disruption of the skin as a metaphor for unity, wholeness and completion.”17

In engraving 37 [Fig. 8], titled “This is worse,” Goya brings his metaphor of

the human body to a climax. In the background, underneath a living tree, a soldier

raises a sword while a second soldier pulls a limp corpse behind him. In the

foreground, a nude male body has been impaled on the sharp branch of a dead tree.

This is ultimate dehumanization: lewd display in place of sacred burial. But it may

be even more significant than that. Janis Tomlinson suggests a parallel between this

body and the Belvedere Torso.18 Goya has taken a symbol of Hellenistic beauty and

destroyed it before our eyes “to attest to the end of any faith in an ideal.”19

In the Illustrations, Blake shows Job’s suffering through his physical body. In

engraving no. 6 [see again Fig. 6], Satan takes dominion over Job’s physicality: “The

death of four of Job’s senses—sight, hearing, taste, and smell—is indicated by the

four arrows beneath Satan’s right hand. The fifth, touch, […] is now corrupted.”20

Like Goya, Blake demonstrates his technical skill and admiration for human

anatomy. And, like Goya, Blake too uses violation of the body to emphasize suffering

and, particularly, the shame that accompanies it. The scales on Satan’s neck and legs

mirror the boils that now cover Job’s body—the “excrescences sent out by the

17 Philip Shaw, “Abjection Sustained: Goya, the Chapman brothers and the Disasters of War,” Art History 26, no. 4 (2003), 485. 18 Janis Tomlinson, Francisco Goya y Lucientes, 1746-1828 (London, UK: Phaidon, 1999), 193. 19 Ibid., 193. 20 Damon, 22.

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passions within.”21 Christopher Rowland points out a parallel passage in Blake’s

poem Jerusalem: “The disease of Shame covers from head to feet. I have no hope.

Every boil on my body is a separate and deadly Sin.”22

Blake has also imbedded a deep symbolism in the physical postures of his

characters in the Illustrations; a pattern that scholar Joseph Wicksteed discovered in

the early 90s:

Wicksteed’s most important discovery was the significance of right and left—symbols fixed in our language and deep in our subconscious. The right hand or foot is the good, the spiritual; the left is the material, the legal, even the wrong.23

When the messenger arrives in plate no. 4 [Fig. 9] to deliver the news of Job’s sons

he arrives left foot and left hand forward. In no. 9 [Fig. 10], Eliphaz gestures with his

left hand to his vision of the false God. And in no. 17 [Fig. 11], when Christ meets Job

and his wife he stands to bless them with his right foot forward.

Vengeance

Once they have shown us the unthinkable lengths to which their subjects are

oppressed, Goya and Blake give us genuine, raw human responses to suffering. We

are confronted with a theme of vengeance early on in Goya. Plate no. 3 [Fig. 12] is

often given the English title “The same [thing]”24 and depicts an enraged Spaniard

bearing down upon a French soldier with an ax. This is one of the few times that

Goya allows us to see the eyes of a French soldier. In the majority of his images, the

21 Emily S. Hamblen, Interpretation of William Blake’s Job: Its Ancient Wisdom and Mystic Ways (New York, NY: Haskell House, 1965), 14. 22 Rowland, 35. 23 Damon, 3. 24 Philip Hofer, Introduction to The Disasters of War (New York, NY: Dover, 1967), 2.

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French are visually dehumanized and objectified—their backs are turned, their

profiles lost and their eyes blotted out. Not so in no. 3, we can see the look of terror

in the French soldier’s face, his pupils enlarged in fright and his hand upraised in

protection (not unlike the child in no. 11). By contrast, the gaunt cheeks, blank stare

and open mouth of the Spanish attacker make him almost ghoul-‐like or skeletal. Is

this brief turning of the tide a heroic moment or a tragic embrace of “the same” evil?

Goya does not allow us to take a side or a political stance here; he forces us to

acknowledge the paradox of violence.25

In the images that follow we have acts of violence from the women. In plates

4, 5, 7, and 9 [Figs. 13, 14, 15, and 1 respectively] Goya gives us a progression of

scenes in which “The women give courage” (no. 4), “And are like wild beasts” (no. 5).

They fight back at the end of pike and cannon and, as in no. 5, even with child on hip.

They are exacting revenge for the violence and assault directed towards their sex. As

Bouvier points out, this “violence dehumanizes both sides of the conflict.”26 Goya

does not justify the actions of the Spanish resistance but “compels the viewer to take

up a moral stance against war.”27

For Blake, Job reaches his breaking point in plate no. 8 [Fig. 16]. Job is in the

center, boils still evident on his unclothed body. On his left and right his wife and

friends avert their eyes, disgraced at Job’s blasphemy. Job is questioning God. His

mouth is open and his eyes are raised to heaven. The stone cross, which Damon

25 Shaw, 480. 26 Bouvier, 1113. 27 Shaw, 480. See also Tomlinson, page 202 on Goya’s refusal to “glorify the protagonists.”

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identifies as Blake’s symbol for legalism,28 is no longer behind Job as it has been the

previous times we’ve seen it—Job is allowing his suppressed anger to break forth.

But Blake wants us to remember that Job is “cursing the day he was born but

not the Almighty.”29 Job’s hands are raised to heaven and his palms are open in what

could be interpreted as an act of deference. Blake seems to be suggesting that

through his lament Job has reached a “spiritual turning point.”30 He can

acknowledge his anger at the injustice shown towards him but remain reverent in

order that he may “by questioning eventually find the true God.”31

Cyclical Oppression

A final observation on Goya and Blake is that their narrative methods are

similar: the Disasters and Job both follow a three-‐act structure and they both appear

to be cyclical in nature. The Disasters fall into three distinct parts: no. 2-‐47 scenes of

war, no. 48-‐64 scenes of famine and no. 65-‐80 fantastic images.32 As for the

Illustrations, they too can be grouped in three acts: innocence and experience (no. 1-‐

7), revolution and the dark night (no. 8-‐14) and the new life (no. 15-‐21).33 In each,

the first act presents us with injustice and violence, the second act shows us the

tactile and emotional repercussions, and the last act is a search for meaning in

suffering.

28 Damon, 26. 29 Rowland. Goya too curses the day of one’s birth in Disasters no. 12 “This is what you were born for” where a lone figure vomits at the sight of twisted bodies on a battlefield. 30 Damon, 26. 31 Ibid. 32 Tomlinson, 191. 33 Damon, 5.

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Additionally, both narratives seem to bear the possibility of repetition.

Christopher Rowland suggests that Blake interpreted Job’s life as a cycle:

…the return in Engraving 21 to a state in some ways similar to that shown in Engraving 1 suggests that the experience recounted in image and text in the Job series is not a ‘one off’ but may have to be repeated throughout a life which can degenerate into the state summarized by the words ‘Thus did Job continually’ (Job 1:5).34

Similarly, the last plate of the Disasters, no. 83 “Infame Provecho” or “Infamous

gain,” also suggests the repeating of a cycle [Fig. 17]. The images leading up to it

foster hope through a motif of Truth personified as a woman. There may be

redemption in this suffering after all. However, in the last plate, no. 83, we return to

an all too recognizable scene of violence and death. We are right back where we

started.

Conclusion

We have just considered the possibility that Goya and Blake saw suffering as

an ongoing cycle, so it may seem futile now to ask if either artist found any reason

for hope and new life in their contemplation of these themes. However, upon

examination, we find that both artists do indeed retain some basis for hope, but it is

in their response to hope that Goya and Blake depart from one another.

When Los Desastres de la Guerra was first published by the Academy of San

Fernando it was a set of 80 engravings rather than the 83 that we know today. The

last three prints were not discovered until after 1863 and were included in later

34 Rowland, 16.

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editions.35 Thus the original version ended with no. 80 [Fig. 18], in which Truth,

personified as a woman, radiates light and illuminates the darkness but remains

unconscious with eyes closed. The caption reads, “Will she live again?”36

Goya seems to answer his own question in (what is now know as) plate no.

82, “This is the truth” [Fig. 19]. A woman in a white dress with revealed, life giving

breasts—again, a quote in the long tradition—is discovered by a lone, bearded man.

We cannot make out the expression of the man, but in his hand he holds a farmer’s

hoe. This may be a clue; it is one of the few times in the Disasters that we see a tool

not meant for destruction. It is an object of productivity and self-‐reliance. Though

the cycle may inevitably repeat itself, perhaps Goya is suggesting that if we lay down

our tools of war for tools of peace, we can regain a glimpse of the truth.

Interestingly, Blake has a similar image in his Illustrations. Plate no. 17 [see

again Fig. 11] in Job parallels Disasters no. 82 in its depiction of a celestial figure

radiating light as it stands on “human ground.” For Blake, this is Christ revealing

himself in bodily form to Job and his wife—it is a similar moment of truth becoming

flesh. However, in Blake’s next image the Job narrative departs significantly from

Goya.

After encountering “truth,” Job’s response in engraving no. 18 [Fig. 20] is to

offer a burnt sacrifice to the Lord. According to Rowland, “Job’s liberation finally

comes through his act of forgiveness when he prays for his friends. The decisive

35 Hofer, 3. 36 Ibid., 80.

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moment comes when Job practices love of enemies.”37 It is important to notice Job’s

direction here: he is facing inward, away from us. In the original set of watercolors

(known as the “Thomas Butts set” after their commissioner), Blake has Job facing

outward. When Blake reworked the series for his friend John Linnell—who later

commissioned the engravings—he changed the direction of Job’s body in plate no.

18. Damon recognizes this as symbolic of Job’s “inward act” of forgiveness; it is not

something decadent or forced but something personal and sincere.38

Epiphany

One final question remains, why is Blake able to depict forgiveness while

Goya is only able to move on to the next cycle? The difference may be that Job

receives an epiphany from the Lord. Damon describes this as, “mystical ecstasy

[which is] a state of knowledge as well as emotion, but the knowledge is usually so

profound as to be incommunicable afterward.”39 In engravings 14 and 15 [Figs. 21

and 22], God shows Job what he is doing in the Earth. He brings Job back to the

creation of the world and shows him the interplay of the sun, moon and stars. He

shows him the power of the Behemoth and the Leviathan. Once Job sees himself in

the context of a larger meta-‐narrative he is able to make sense of his own narrative

and move towards forgiveness: “And at that moment ‘The Lord turned the captivity

of Job.’”40

37 Rowland, 18-‐19. 38 Damon, 46. 39 Ibid., 38. 40 Rowland, 19.

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Figure 1: Disasters no. 9 Figure 2: Disasters no. 10

Figure 3: Disasters no. 11 Figure 4: Disasters no. 13

Figure 5: Job no. 2 Figure 6: Job no. 6

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Figure 7: Job no. 7

Figure 8: Disasters no. 37

Figure 9: Job no. 4

Figure 10: Job no. 9

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Bibliography

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sentiment of humanity.” International Review of the Red Cross 93, no. 884

(2011): 1107-‐1133.

Damon, S. Foster. Blake’s Job: William Blake’s Illustrations for the Book of Job.

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Davis, Michael. William Blake: A new kind of man. Los Angeles, CA: University of

California, 1977.

Faucus, Arnold. “Blake’s Illustrations for the Book of Job.” Times Literary Supplement

(March 15, 1974): 271-‐272.

Glendinning, Nigel. Goya and His Critics. Hew Haven, CT: Yale, 1977.

Hamblen, Emily S. Interpretation of William Blake’s Job: Its Ancient Wisdom and

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Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2005): 138-‐159.

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War.” Art History 26, no. 4 (2003): 479-‐504.

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Quarterly 11, no. 1 (1994): 3-‐17.

Images of Suffering: Goya's Disasters of War and Blake's Illustrations for the Book of Job

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