Postscript to La Pepa and A Painting by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes: La Junta de Filipinas
“In 1815, Goya was commissioned to commemorate a meeting of the junta of the Royal Company of the Philippines, then a Spanish colony. The result was one of the most subtly devastating comments ever made by an artist on officialdom, on the pompous gathering of authorities to determine the fate of others. In the dead center of the canvas, whose vast dimensions (more than thirteen feet wide) and sweeping one-point perspective suggest virtual extension of the spectator’s space into the council room, we see Ferdinand VII himself, a tiny figure seated haughtily against a round-back chair a trifle larger than those that fan out around him. But this foreboding image of power is so remote that it becomes a phantom of judicial authority. Moreover, the simple box space, evocative of the most stable and rational order, is invaded by engulfing shadows that contrast strangely with the disintegrating glare of sunlight from what seems an alien world outside. Inside, all is darkness and inertia. The figures on the two sides have barely the energy left to shift their legs as they squirm with boredom, and those on the dais look as if they may soon be absorbed into their chairs.”
Quote from 19th-Century Art by Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson
Fantastic painting.
