Time to Re-open the Debate about the Reattribution of Goya's Colossus?

Abstract

In 2008 the Prado Museum took the decision to remove from the Goya canon a well-known painting, long accepted by specialists as an authentic work by the artist, generally called El Coloso (The Colossus). The work was initially reattributed to Goya's friend and pupil Asensio Julià by the Museum, although more recently their website has given it to an ‘unknown follower of Goya’. A number of art historians in Britain and the United States as well as in Spain itself, wrote articles rebutting the initial arguments put forward by the Museum for reattribution, and the present writer was an active contributor to these debates in learned journals and the popular press in Spain. Since the Prado has failed to reconsider its position, or attempt to demolish the arguments put forward against its own theories, the problems surrounding the debate are summarized in the present article, fresh doubts about the Museum's case and its mode of procedure are presented, and new arguments in favour of Goya's authorship advanced.