Goya’s Illness: A Case of Lead Encephalopathy?

Leonurdo, zyxwvutsrqpon Vol. 6,pp. 157-161. PergamonPress 1973. Printedin Great Britain zyxwvu GOYA’S ILLNESS: A CASE OF LEAD ENCEPHALOPATHY?* William 0. Niederland** I. INTRODUCTION zyxwvuts The medical history of Goya’s personality and illness (or illnesses) has long been the subject of investigatipn by art historians, biographers, clinicians and scholars interested in the relationship between disease and creativity. The medical problems pertaining to Goya’s life and artistic career are of considerableinterest, not only because of his exceptional achievement zyxwvut as an artist-he was a master portraitist-but also because during his long life he suffered protracted periods of physical and/or psychiatric disabilities. The exact nature of these conditions has never been identified. ThefirstbiographicnoteswehaveaboutFrancisco JosC de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) go back to 1828, the year of his death. In one of the earliest catalogues of the Madrid museum, now called el Prado, originallyknown as the Galeria del Museo del Rey, we find the followingterse entry: ‘FranciscoGoya. Born at Fuendetodos, Araghn, in 1746. Nominated Painter to the King in 1786 and later made Senior Court Painter; now on a pension for old age. zyxwvutsr . . He had no other master than his own observation of famous paintings and painters in Rome and Spain, from which he drew greatest profit.’ This brief entry ends on an equally succinctnote: ‘Article communicated by himself.’ It contains no reference whatever to the serious, at times lifethreatening , disease or diseases or the permanent deafness from which Goya suffered from at least his middlefortiesuntil his death at the ageof eightytwo . We know also of an earlier disabilitybetween 1778 to 1781, described as a state of depression or melancholia, which kept him partially away from hisworkduringthisperiod. 11. EFFECT OF ILLNESS ON HIS PAINTINGS Late in 1792or early 1793 Goya was strickenwith anincapacitatingdiseaseofapparentlysuddenonset, * Abridged version of article that appeared in the New York State Journal of Medicine, 72, 413 (1972). Reprinted with permission from the Medical Society of the State of New York. ** Clinical professor of psychiatry, 1143 F i f t h Avenue, New York, N.Y., U.S.A.(Received25 April 1972.) fulminatingimpact and lastingconsequences. From contemporarydocuments(letters,preservedrecords, and so on)we know a gooddealabout the symptoms of the diseasethat lasted for many months:paralysis of the right side; vertigo; impairment of balance, hearing, and speech; partial blindness; tremors; convulsivemanifestations;resoundingnoises in the head; mental confusion, probably accompanied by hallucinatory experiences; and comatose or semicomatose states. A man of remarkably robust constitution and vigor, Goya was able even in his lateseventiestotravelacrossthe Pyreneesrepeatedly on his way to France as a political exilefrom Spain and recovered after a year or so of convalescence. But the disease produced two lasting changes: He remained totally deaf until the end of his life and he emerged from the ordeal a different person or, Fig. 1. ‘Infante Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga’, oil, 1788. (Collectionof the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.) 157 158 zyxwvutsrqpon WilliamG. Niederland Fig. zyxwvutsrqpon 2. ‘LaNevada’, oil, 1786. zyxwvutsrqp (Collectionof El Prado, Madrid.) perhaps more precisely, a different artist. Once a painter of gentle genre pictures, colorful scenes of picnics and games, elegant tapestry and cartoons in rococo style, he now became a man who took a harsh, often merciless, and vengeful view of the worldwithoutand within. Asthe art critic,Canaday [I], has put it: ‘Goya’s life was split in two near its midpoint by an illnessthat nearly killed him. zyxwvu ..a new Goya emerged, Goya the humane and bitter social observer, the scourging and despairing delineator of vice and cruelty ...whose picture of nightmares explored the most desperate realities.’ Although this is essentiallycorrect, it is noteworthy that someof Goya’searlier paintings,namely,those before 1792and 1793, also show at times a sinister note, for example, the ominous-looking gray cats in the beautifulchild portrait of the Infante (Fig. l), or the melancholy, almost leaden quality of the ‘La Nevada’ winter scene (Fig. 2). III. NATURE OF GOYA’S ILLNESS What was the nature of Goya’s illness? Most biographers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuriesthought it was syphilis. In support of this thesis, they adduced the allegedly20 pregnancies or stillbirthsof his wifeJosefa. Only one child, his son Javier, survived...