Emily Chan
After the death of Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1828, a series of 14 murals were found painted on the walls of his home near Madrid.
They were all incredibly strange and unsettling, created when he was in a deep state of depression and paranoia.
However, one painting stood out from the rest. It was so violent and frightening that it is still referred to as the most disturbing piece of artwork in existence.
The painting is called Saturn Devouring His Son, and it depicts a large, human-like creature with wild eyes taking a bite out of an unclothed human figure.
The victim is missing its head and an arm as if the creature had already torn them off. Many experts believe that Goya’s piece portrays the titan Cronus and his kin from the ancient Greek myth.
According to legend, Cronus, or Saturn as he’s called in the Roman version, was a titan and the father of the six gods of Olympus. He feared a prophecy stating that one of his own children would be the cause of his downfall. So, he devoured every child of his to prevent his fate from occurring.
His wife, Rhea, was desperate to save her children. She hid Zeus, her sixth son, on the island of Crete and gave Cronus a large stone wrapped in a swaddle to swallow instead. When Zeus grew powerful enough, he attacked his father out of revenge.
There are some key differences between what is portrayed in Goya’s painting and the story itself, though.
In an ancient poem, Theogony, written by Hesiod, Cronus was said to have swallowed his children whole rather than torn them apart. The bloody victim in the painting also appeared to be a fully grown and feminine human, not an infant son.
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