Atropos (Goya)

Common card · No. 339601

Atropos, or The Fates (Spanish: Átropos or Las Parcas) is one of the 14 Black Paintings painted by Francisco de Goya between 1819–1823. Goya, then 75 and in mental and physical despair, created the series directly onto the interior walls of the house known as the Quinta del Sordo ("House of the Deaf Man"), purchased in 1819. It probably occupied a position on the second floor of the house beside the Fight with Cudgels and across from the Fantastic Vision. Like the rest of the black paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1873–74 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Prado. The painting is a reinterpretation of the mythological subject of the goddesses of destiny—the Moirai or fates as recounted in Homer, Hesiod, Virgil and other classical writers. These "Daughters of Night" were headed by Atropos, the inexorable goddess...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Francisco Goya, Public domain