Friday Art: Self Portrait With Doctor Arrieta by Francisco Goya (1820)

I’m home with a cold today, mostly resting.

Or trying to rest, while I keep one eye on the fire burning many miles away and another eye on the chance that my electricity might be turned off, since I’m in an area of North Korea California where they’re allowed to turn off people’s power so that they don’t have to pay for fires their unmaintained equipment causes.

Gee, I wish I had connections like that, don’t you?

So today’s theme is “feeling sick.” And while I’m not a victim of what may have actually been plague in Goya’s painting of Arrieta saving his life (which is what the inscription reads). Arrieta had studied plague and yellow fever in North Africa around this time, so it’s a plausible theory. Or, Goya was already in questionable health and was in his 70s, so he might have had a cold like mine and simply felt like he was gonna die.

Look at the doc, making the house call and also playing nurse – holding up the ailing Goya as he grips his bed sheet, while trying to get that glass of what I assume is medicine down as shadowy figures observe in the background.

Are they maids or servants? Doctor’s assistants? Ghosts and demons awaiting Goya, perhaps… sounds like something he’d throw in there.

Arietta would cure Goya, who’d live another 8 years. Goya painted this as a gift for Arietta. Hopefully he also paid his bill.

Maybe I’ll muster up enough energy to make some more mediocre football picks in another post later. Or maybe I’ll just take a nap.