The Rape of Europa
Francisco Goya·1772
Historical Context
Goya's Rape of Europa from 1772 is one of his earliest surviving works, painted as a submission for the painting prize of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Parma when he was twenty-six and studying in Rome and visiting Italian cities. The mythological subject, treated in the grand manner strongly influenced by Giambattista Tiepolo — whose work Goya had studied carefully in the Palazzo Labia in Venice — reveals the young painter's ambition to work within the mainstream of European academic painting. He did not win the main prize, but received an honourable mention; the competition demonstrated that he possessed the technical competence to compete at the highest level of academic tradition. His early debt to Tiepolo's luminous, theatrical approach to mythology is evident throughout these Italian years, and the contrast between this early mythological ambition and the personal, psychologically probing subjects he would develop after 1790 marks the distance his art would travel across his career.
Technical Analysis
The composition follows eighteenth-century academic conventions for mythological subjects, with the swooping figure of Jupiter as the bull carrying Europa through churning waves. Goya's early technique shows the influence of Tiepolo in its luminous palette and dynamic composition.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the influence of Tiepolo's dynamic composition: Goya's Italian journey brought him into contact with the grandest decorative painting tradition of the century, and his competition entry shows him absorbing that influence.
- ◆Look at the ambitious scale of the figures and landscape: this is Goya attempting grand manner history painting, a mode very different from the Spanish genre scenes he would later make his own.
- ◆Observe the luminous palette and dynamic composition: the swooping, airborne quality of the scene reflects the Venetian decorative tradition's love of movement and aerial drama.
- ◆Find the young artist's ambition in the complex figural arrangement: Goya was twenty-six and trying to demonstrate every technique he had learned, making this an unusually self-conscious display of capability.
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