Saturn Devouring His Son

A painting by Francisco Goya showing the Roman god Saturn consuming one of his children. It is one of the Black Paintings, made directly on the walls of Goya’s home near Madrid.

Black Paintings: A group of fourteen dark paintings Goya made on the walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo. This work belongs to the group and shares its disturbing imagery and restricted palette.
Cronus: A Greek Titan who swallowed his children to prevent them from overthrowing him. The myth’s Greek figure is the counterpart of the Roman Saturn depicted in Goya’s painting.
Saturn: The sixth planet from the Sun, known for its extensive system of rings. The shared name can obscure that the painting depicts a mythological god, not the planet.
Cannibalism: The act of consuming an individual of the same species as food. The painting’s central act is a stark depiction of human cannibalism.
Francisco Goya: A Spanish painter and printmaker whose work spanned court portraiture, war imagery, and late experimental paintings. Goya painted this image directly onto a wall at the Quinta del Sordo.
Saturn (mythology): The Roman god of agriculture and time, identified with the Greek Titan Cronus. Goya recasts this god as the child-devouring figure of classical myth.
Júpiter and Saturn: A Goya painting showing Jupiter confronting Saturn, now held by the Prado Museum. This related mythological work offers a contrast with the raw, isolated figure in the Black Painting.
Filicide: The killing of one’s own child by a parent. The mythic violence presents a parent destroying the children he should protect.
Quinta del Sordo: A country house near Madrid where Goya lived and painted the Black Paintings on its walls. The painting occupied a dining-room wall in this house before its transfer to canvas.
Theogony: An epic poem by Hesiod recounting the origins and succession of the Greek gods. Hesiod’s account supplies the mythic pattern of a ruler swallowing his offspring.

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