Elusive facts and persuasive fictionsGoya's Allegories in the Nationalmuseum of Stockholm
ISSN: 1468-2737
Year of publication: 2010
Volume: 11
Issue: 5
Pages: 415-433
Type: Article
More publications in: Hispanic Research Journal: Iberian and Latin American Studies
Abstract
There are reasons to believe that Goya was associated with the circle of ilustrados working under the influence of the 'philosophical history' imported from France and Great Britain into late eighteenth-century Spain. His connections with this intellectual milieu prompt a revaluation of the interpretation of his allegorical paintings in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm that Folke Nordström proposed in 1962. Manuel Godoy, who probably owned them, favoured some authors pertaining to this historiographic trend, while also fostering projects aimed at preserving the Spanish national heritage, such as Laborde's Voyage pittoresque. The notions of history and of its relationship with poetry depicted by Goya must therefore be considered in connection with contemporary debates on the meaning and on the writing of history.