A half-wit king content to renounce
the affairs of State for the pleasures of the hunt; a queen, intelligent and unscrupulous in the exercise of her unlimited control over both king and country; an incompetent playboy raised to the dignity of Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four after a brief career as a guardsman, at one and the same time both the Queen’s lover and the King’s favourite – these were the guardians of the divine right of kings at a time when the principle of legitimacy was challenged by an
ex-corporal dethroning half the monarchs of
Europe. The poison of ‘dangerous ideas’ expressed in the fashion of majaism was destroying the old moral order at its roots, even before the new forces were strong enough to replace it.
F.D. Klingender, Goya
In The Democratic Tradtion (“The Caprichos” chapter), London, Sidgwick and Jackson, Ltd., 1948.
Bruce Nauman artworks,
1985.
