In the Blazing Light

SET in eighteenth-century Spain and compounded of the usual heady mixture of intrigue, exciting incident, and romance, this historical novel is the story of the growth of the great Spanish artist, Goya, as he progresses from a vain upstart to Court painter, and finally becomes the cynical recorder of human cruelty.

Coming up to Madrid after a roistering young manhood, Goya soon found himself in the midst of personal and public conflicts. As a young artist, he decried the traditional in painting; as the son of a peasant, he was outspoken against the nobility. Yet as an ambitious painter whose overpowering ego demanded recognition at Court, he was forced to accept some sort of compromise — to conform at least ostensibly to the wishes of his royal benefactors.

In the Court ladies, and particularly in the beautiful but maddening Duchess of Alba, he found an insulting challenge. Yet at the height of his social triumphs, he would weary of the senseless parlor games of his Duchess and would hasten to the Tavern to seek the company of Antonia, who loved him with a childlike faith, and to listen to young Vicente sing the sad songs of the Spanish people.

The characters of the book are drawn from Goya’s Court portraits and from the grimy subjects of his etchings. Weak kings totter on the throne of Spain; the Inquisition sends its muffled carriages through the dark streets. The court revels in pageantry while the people stir restlessly, and the revolution in France is the topic in the salons. Finally, Murat sends the murdering French Army into Madrid. The deaf and outraged Goya wanders through the carnage, fixing in his mind the scenes which are to become the subject of his great etchings, The Disasters of the War.

ROBERT W. ANDERSON