Fight with Cudgels

Francisco Goya · 1820

Fight with Cudgels - Francisco Goya

Two men swing heavy clubs at each other under an open sky, neither able to step away. Goya painted this brutal duel on the wall of his own house, and it has never stopped asking why people fight.

The story behind the painting

In 1819 Goya bought a small two-storey house on the banks of the Manzanares near Madrid, known as the Quinta del Sordo, the "Villa of the Deaf Man". It was named for an earlier deaf occupant, though Goya himself had been left deaf after a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he moved to Bordeaux, he painted fourteen works in oil directly onto its walls, now called the Black Paintings. Fight with Cudgels was in the upper room. Goya gave these pictures no titles; the names come from art historians, and old inventories called this one The Strangers or Cowherds. Wikidata dates it 1820, while Wikipedia places it sometime between 1820 and 1823.

What to look for

The painting is wide, 125 by 261 centimetres, and most of that width is landscape and cloudy sky. Against this open, desolate space stand two men, face to face, each raising a cudgel. Notice how close they are: there is no room for retreat. Now look at their legs. Below the knees they seem to vanish, as if sunk into mud or sand. This is the detail that has shaped how the picture is read, and it has a surprising history. Photographs taken by Jean Laurent before the painting was transferred from the wall suggest that the lower parts looked different then, a point we return to below.

Meaning and intent

The traditional reading sees two commoners fighting in a desolate place, trapped knee-deep, unable to escape a struggle that may destroy both. Research complicates this. Nigel Glendinning noted differences between the present painting and Laurent's photographs, and in 2010 a study by Carlos Foradada argued that Goya painted the duellists standing in high grass. The transfer from the wall caused the loss of large areas, which were then concealed below the knees, favouring the idea of buried legs. Francisco-Xavier de Salas Bosch proposed another layer: an emblem by Diego de Saavedra Fajardo recalling Cadmus, whose dragon's-teeth warriors fought each other, used to discuss rulers who stir up discord. Goya may have been alluding to Ferdinand VII.

Legacy

Fight with Cudgels belongs to Goya's Black Paintings, among the most discussed works he made. Removed from the walls of the Quinta del Sordo, it is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Its story shows how much a painting can change on its journey: damage during the transfer altered the image, and with it the way generations understood the scene. Whether you see two men sinking into the earth or standing in tall grass, the core remains the same - a fight with no clear winner, set in an empty land under a heavy sky. Standing before it, many visitors find it impossible to look away.

Lo sapevi?

Wikipedia · Wikidata

L'artista

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

genre art · Museo del Prado · landscape · cloud

Altre opere di Francisco Goya