El boceto y la información. Goya y las pinturas de San Francisco de Borja entre la imaginación y las fuentes textuales

Abstract

Goya's lateral paintings of the Borja-chapel at Valencia cathedral deserve some attention: First they present themes without any iconography forerunner. On the other side for these laterals there are preserved as an exception in Goya's oeuvre not only two preparatory drawings but two oil-sketches as well. So the different stages from the first idea to the finished paintings are to be well persecuted. Precise investigation of the compositions proves that Goya kept the general disposition from the beginning, whereas he changed the compositions in part between drawings and oil-sketches. There is some evidence that while working Goya got to know and followed a particular biography on the Borja-saint, a text by the Jesuit-Cardinal Cienfuegos. Moreover the unique choice of scenes is to be interpreted as a cautious wangling out of a dilemma: Goya's patrons and the appropriate representation of their family-saint on one side and the political situation after the expulsion of the Jesuits in late eighteenth-century Spain on the other.