Duelo a garrotazos de Goya fotografíado por J

''Fight with Cudgels'' ( es, Riña a garrotazos or ''Duelo a garrotazos''), called ''The Strangers'' or ''Cowherds'' in the inventories, is the name given to a painting by

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

artist

Francisco Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

, now in the

Museo del Prado The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...

, Madrid. One of the series of ''

Black Paintings The ''Black Paintings'' (Spanish: ''Pinturas negras'') is the name given to a group of 14 paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his ...

'' Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1820 and 1823, it depicts two men fighting one another with

cudgel A club (also known as a cudgel, baton, bludgeon, truncheon, cosh, nightstick, or impact weapon) is a short staff or stick, usually made of wood, wielded as a weapon since prehistoric times. There are several examples of blunt-force trauma caused ...

s, as they seem to be trapped knee-deep in a quagmire of mud or sand. In 1819, Goya purchased a house on the banks of the Manzanares near Madrid named Quinta del Sordo ("Villa of the Deaf Man"). It was a small two-story house which was named after a previous occupant who had been deaf, although Goya had also been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he moved to

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

, Goya produced a series of 14 works, which he painted with oils directly onto the walls of the house. ''Fight with Cudgels'' had been situated in the upper room of Quinta del Sordo.Richard Schickel and the Editors of Time-Life Books, ''The World of Goya 1746-1828'' (New York: Time-Life Books, 1968), 172.

Interpretations

The traditional interpretation has been as fight of two commoners fighting in a desolate place trapped knee-deep. The British researcher

Nigel Glendinning Oliver Nigel Valentine Glendinning (16 October 1929 – 23 February 2013), known as Nigel Glendinning, was a scholar and authority on Francisco Goya, Goya and 18th Century Spanish literature. He wrote a history of Spanish literature in the age o ...

had already remarked on the differences between the final detail of the Black Paintings and the detail documented by Jean Laurent, before the transfer from the wall of Goya's home. By the end of 2010, another study of the Laurent images by Carlos Foradada, a painter and teacher of Art History, restated that Goya painted the duelists standing in high grass rather than knee deep in mud. The failure in the transfer caused the loss of large areas of the painting, which was then concealed below the knees. This favored the interpretation of the interred legs.«La cara oculta de las 'pinturas negras'»
''Público. es'', 29 December 2010. According to Francisco-Xavier de Salas Bosch, Goya may have been referencing an allegory (number 75)Page 572
of ''Idea de vn principe politico christiano'',

Diego de Saavedra Fajardo Diego de Saavedra Fajardo (24 August 1648) was a Spanish Diplomacy, diplomat and Intellectual, man of letters. Biography He was born in Algezares, in what is now the province of Murcia. After receiving a religious education at Salamanca, he to ...

, 1643, Munich. At Biblioteca Digital Hispánica. that appears in the work by

, the

emblem book An emblem book is a book collecting emblems (allegorical illustrations) with accompanying explanatory text, typically morals or poems. This category of books was popular in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. Emblem books are collections ...

''Empresas Políticas olitical Maxims Idea de un príncipe político cristiano'', which contained a hundred short essays on the education of a prince. The allegory referred to the Greek myth of

Cadmus In Greek mythology, Cadmus (; grc-gre, Κάδμος, Kádmos) was the legendary Phoenician founder of Boeotian Thebes. He was the first Greek hero and, alongside Perseus and Bellerophon, the greatest hero and slayer of monsters before the da ...

and the dragon's teeth. By the instructions of

Athena Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of ...

, Cadmus sowed the dragon's teeth in the ground, from which there sprang a race of fierce armed men, called ''

Spartoi In Greek mythology, Spartoi (also Sparti or Spartae) (Ancient Greek: Σπαρτοί, literal translation: "sown en, from σπείρω, ''speírō'', "to sow") are a mythical people who sprang up from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus and were ...

'' ("sown"). By throwing a stone among them, Cadmus caused them to fall upon one another until only five survived, who assisted him to build the Cadmea (citadel) of Thebes. Saavedra used this imagery to discuss how some rulers stir up discord in order to ultimately establish peace in their kingdoms. Goya's use of this allegory may have referred to the policies and politics of

Ferdinand VII , house = Bourbon-Anjou , father = Charles IV of Spain , mother = Maria Luisa of Parma , birth_date = 14 October 1784 , birth_place = El Escorial, Spain , death_date = , death_place = Madrid, Spain , burial_plac ...

Notes

External links

*
Ficha de ''Duelo a garrotazos''
Museo del Prado. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fight with Cudgels 1820s paintings Paintings by Francisco Goya in the Museo del Prado category:19th-century allegorical paintings category:Allegorical paintings by Spanish artists

Interpretations

See also

Notes

External links