The children of Goya (I)

It is not known with certainty how many children had Goya. There are some who claimthat seven children, and some, such as Guillermo Díaz Plaja, assert that they were twenty!(see “Goya en sus Cartas y otros escritos”. Heraldo de Aragón, Zaragoza, 1980. Page 28)Ansón says and collect eight children, and says that “all of them (Antonio, Eusebio, Vicente, a premature, María del Pilar, Francisco de Paula, Andrés and Francisco Javier) died at birth or being very children, except the last, Javier Goya and Bayeu, born on December 4th, 1784, who was the heir of the painter”.

Of course, children made with his wife Josefa (Pepa) Bayeu Subías, sister of Francisco, Ramon and fray Manuel.

Equally, Anson says that “the parents of Goya had a house in Zaragoza in MoreríaCerrada Street, in the parish of San Gil, until 1762. Being the house seized for debts, they had to move to another for rent in the Coso, against the so-called Rocks of the Coso, and years later to another in the street and square of San Miguel”.

Goya marries Josefa Bayeu, in Madrid, July 25th, 1773, in the parish church of SanMartin. The marriage lives in Zaragoza, their city, in which is born their first-born son, male, on August 29th, 1774. The day of his birth will be baptized in the parish of San Miguel de los Navarros, and ‘godparented’ by sculptor Carlos Salas.

The corresponding certificate of baptism is preserved in the archive of the parish of San Miguel de los Navarros, in Book 9 of the aforementioned file.

Whose transcription says as follows:

<>

Down, in the same sheet in which has photocopied the certificate of baptism, is stamped aseal of the parish of San Miguel Q. S. D. of Zaragoza and over it, the signing of the parish priest, Don Fernando Arregui.

“Q. S. D.” (“Quis Sictvi (or Sicut) Deus”) means ´Who As God?’

Looking at the document, one can wonder about the figure of the godfather, Don Carlos Salas, and his undoubted great relationship with the parents of the newborn.

Besides, such closely character related to Goya is none other than the sculptor Carlos Salas Viraseca (Barcelona, 1728 – Zaragoza, March 30th, 1780), with which Francisco de Goya has ample relationship after coincide both in the work of the Pilar and, more specifically in their jobs -barely thirty meters from the other- in the posterior part of the Holy Chapel of mentioned Temple. Goya painted the fresco of the Regina Martirum and Carlos Salas had sculpted a work that F. Abbad Ríos described in “La Seo y el Pilar de Zaragoza” Ed. Plus-Ultra, Madrid, in the following way:

“In the back (of the Holy Chapel), and behind the altars, Carlos Salas carved a magnificent high-relief of the Assumption of the Virgin. At the top, Maria rises to the sky, sitting on clouds surrounded by angels. And at the bottom, the Apostles, around the empty grave, love her and stare at the mystery. This work was such a success that was thought to make it the main altar of the basilica and remove Forment’s altarpiece; but, fortunately, that idea was not carried out. Carlos Salas (*) is an understudied and,therefore, poorly known artist, who worked a lot in Aragon and Catalonia. This is surely his capital work; one of the most beautiful of the Spanish pre-neoclassicism.”

Gonzalo de Diego[/one_half_last]