1819 -1823 · Quinta del Sordo, violence and enigma

Leocadia, old men, Sabbath and duel at the club belong to a private cycle without certain original titles, where Goya confronts old age, crowds, violence and images that are difficult to resolve.

The fourteen black paintings are made directly on the walls of the Quinta del Sordo, a house purchased by Goya near Madrid in 1819. They are not designed for the Salon nor accompanied by titles fixed by the artist. After his death, they were transferred to canvas in the 1870s, an operation which modified their material and their architectural context. Leocadia appears near a mound often interpreted as a tomb. Two old men eating soup reduce their lives to almost spectral faces and gestures. The Witches' Sabbath brings together a group under the grotesque authority of a goat, while Duel with a club shows two men clashing in an open landscape ; the idea that they would be buried up to their knees perhaps comes from the transfer and subsequent interpretation. Saturn, The Dog, The Fates and the pilgrimages complete a whole without a unanimously established program. We must preserve this uncertainty rather than convert each image into a direct biographical confession. The selection "Black Paintings by Francisco de Goya" notably compares La Leocadia and Two Old Men Eating Soup. His reading favors movement.

The Black Paintings resist because they have lost their house but not their enigma: titles, order and meaning remain partially reconstructed.