A European walk through Bordeaux 19
Goya’s Will.
5, rue Mably.
5, rue Mably.
The day after Goya’s
death, on 17 April 1828, a religious
service was held at ten o’clock at the Church of
Notre Dame, before the funeral
at the Chartreuse. No sooner was
his body laid in the ground
than his legitimate son, Javier, appeared
in Bordeaux. In the house of the deceased, among the numerous drawings and sketches, there were only two
paintings: the unfinished
portrait of the next-door neighbour,
José Pio de Molina, and another
portrait shrouded in mystery:
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux. To the last mistress to have helped his father, at the end of his life, Javier consented only to leaving the furniture and linen, 100 francs
to pay for one of Goya’s clothing bills, a copy of the Caprices and The Milkmaid of Bordeaux. Goya is said to have morally bequeathed it to Leocadia, telling her “not to sell it for less than
a gold crown.” Although Goya did
not die in poverty, Leocadia
could not escape it after his death.
A year later, she had to sell
it to one of Goya’s distant
relatives, Juan Bautista de Muguiro, for “a gold
crown.” More than a century
later, in 1945, it was his
descendants who gave it to
the Prado Museum. In 1949, The Milkmaid
of Bordeaux entered the Prado catalogue under number 2,899.
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux made its
mark on the world as the master’s most
amazing masterpiece in the
last days of his life. One
of his most delicate and most moving works, on account of its beauty and simplicity. Over the years, many have written about its odd sweetness,
the serenity of the posture, the tenderness
with which the shawl curves over her chest. As much
a poem as a painting.
For many experts, it was the painter’s legacy, a farewell to life, a
sort of tribute to youth and beauty. An “avant-garde work juxtaposing bright and light colours in broken touches,” in which André
Malraux saw “the tremors of
the last Titians...” And a disturbing
work too. A Goya, an ultimate style, the beginnings of
which were already visible, like a watermark, in the white-blue ochre sky in the background of La
Leocadia, painted in 1819 in Quinta del Sordo, in which
we find this
same light, the start of impressionism. A revolutionary
and prescient work.
The childlike figure, with her face half turned
to the side in an immutable peace,
has always been found unsettling. Numerous essays, books and novels have talked of her and, judging by the flood of literature
she has already inspired, this impetuous torrent is not about to
dry up.
The work was also
found disturbing. During the retrospective of 1996,
the Prado Museum itself was
still quite clear as to its attribution, emphasising in its catalogue the fact that this
is “one of the few works of
these last years where he seems
to have regained his enthusiasm for colour, for light
and beauty”. But in the 21st century, the muse became a target.
In 2001, the first blow
came from England. Juliet
Wilson-Bareau, British art historian
and curator of the Goya: Drawings
from His Private Albums exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, doubted the authenticity of The Milkmaid of
Bordeaux. According to her,
it did not tally with the stylistic and artistic evolution of the paintings in the
last ten years of the artist’s life. An X-ray study revealed beneath the famous painting, on the left, the
head of a Maure and, under
the figure of the milkmaid, a female
figure leaning on the balcony
of a house. In 2001, The Art Newspaper,
followed in 2003 by a biographer of the painter, Robert
Hughes, announced that The Milkmaid of Bordeaux was simply a portrait of Rosario painted
by herself.
It was declared that,
for two centuries, everyone
had fallen for the hoax. And to top it all, it might not even
be from the Bordeaux period. As part of the investigation, the canvas and stretcher had to be analysed
to determine whether they were French or Spanish. In short, The Milkmaid
of Bordeaux is apparently
not the work of Goya, she is not a milkmaid, and perhaps not even from Bordeaux.
The entire world, in its blind admiration, had remained ignorant. It would appear that the sublime work is not that
of a man aged 81, but that
of a child of 12. And it may even
have been painted before
the Bordeaux period, by an artist
aged nine, who never made any claims on it.
We still do not know why it bears
the signature of Goya, or why Moratín, his friend of always
who was in Bordeaux at the
time, recognised the figure as “one of the young country girls who delivered milk to his home in Bordeaux”, and described
the painter’s ultimate
style as “supremely confident and calmer,” of a
painting quality that … …
… …
… …
Continue to the
Church of Notre Dame.
© Bertrand Favreau
and Tyché Editions 2014
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