Visual Analysis of a Goya Painting at the Frick Essay

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Goya, The Forge

Francisco Goya's "The Forge" is a realist painting that relies upon the earlier mythological genre to accomplish its meaning, a meaning which it can be argued is implicitly political. In reality, Goya appears to be painting a scene of village life: three men (a youth, an adult, and an old man) are working in a village smithy, hammering a piece of glowing metal on an anvil. Goya is representing ordinary working men here, so the painting is most properly called realist. However, the subject and composition are heavily reminiscent of a regular topos of mythological painting, the forge of Vulcan: examples before Goya are readily found, ranging from Diego Velazquez, Alessandro Gherardini, Pietro da Cortona, Luca Giordano, or even the rather ridiculous Rococo treatments of the theme by Francois Boucher. It is not necessary to know if Goya knew or made reference to any specific earlier treatment of the topos, however. What Goya is doing is domesticating a heroic and mythological subject -- and in this case, his audience is primarily himself. Like most of Goya's paintings of ordinary people, "The Forge" was not produced for Goya's royal patrons but for the artist himself. However it may be argued that Goya's meaning here is, on a number of levels, as explicitly political as the artist frequently was.

The composition and structure of "The Forge" make it seem more starkly allegorical than it really is. This is because Goya organizes the painting around the three central figures surrounding the anvil, while allowing the background of the painting to be largely undifferentiated, a grey gloom in which the smithy shop is seemingly not represented at all. Strong horizontal lines on the right side of the canvas -- in the center and below -- do give us some sense of an architectural interior space, but they barely find counterparts on the left side of the canvas. The overall effect would seem to be that the interior space is largely obscured by smoke, perhaps, although the figures are not: this would at least expain the ashy grey tone of the back walls and floor on which the figures find themselves.

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But the ultimate effect is to highlight the central figures, and make them seem as though they are engaged in a significant activity. It also establishes a curious relationship between the viewer and the subject: although we may imagine that we are standing inside the blacksmith shop with these three men, it also seems as though they are on stage or on display in a gallery, given the lack of realism in the backdrop. The viewer is seemingly placed alone with these figures engaged in their actions. But this seeming allegorical feel to the painting also undercuts any sense of narrative: we feel like we are looking at a sculpture. The story of the painting is the actions of the men.

Overall, Goya's technique seems to be focused on emphasizing the heavy physicality of their actions here. The foremost figure in the painting, the blacksmith, has his back to the viewer. The breeches on his left leg have come undone and fall around his ankle, on his right leg they are still tied up to his knee but coming loose: this indicates presumably the effect of the heavy physical motion of using the hammer on the hot metal. The musculature on the figure's bare left calf and bare left arm is likewise heavily defined, and even in the gloom of the interior space with its heavy chiaroscuro indicating a light source (probably the furnace) to the left outside the frame of the painting, we can still see the tensed muscles of his back and shoulders, his buttocks, his thighs. The youthful figure in the rear of the painting, who falls to the left of this central figure from the viewer's perspective, has his muscular tension and his visual focus directed on his part in the task, which is holding the hot metal with tongs: as a result, this figure is depicted mostly in terms of his contrapposto, which has him leaning in toward the anvil with….....

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