The Colossus

The Colossus (El coloso, also called The Giant or The Panic) is an oil-on-canvas painting attributed to Francisco Goya, generally dated after 1808 and before 1812, during the Peninsular War; it has been in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, since 1931.

A naked giant towers over a range of mountains that hide his legs to the thighs, clouds wrapped round his waist and one fist raised at shoulder height. In the dark valley below, a crowd of tiny people and herds of cattle scatter in every direction; only a donkey stands still. Nigel Glendinning linked the image to Juan Bautista Arriaza's patriotic poem Pyrenean Prophecy, published in 1810, in which the Spanish people rise as a giant from the Pyrenees to resist Napoleon, with clouds reddened by the western sun around its waist. Other writers have seen in the giant blind violence, Ferdinand VII, or the monarchy opposing Napoleon. The quick touches of colour, partly applied with a spatula, and the dominant black recall the Black Paintings.

An inventory drawn up in 1812 after the death of Goya's wife, Josefa Bayeu, lists "a giant" with the same measurements, marked X for their son Javier and numbered 18. The picture later belonged to the Marquis of Perales and passed to his great-grandson Pedro Fernández Durán, who bequeathed it to the Prado.

In June 2008 the Prado's curator Manuela Mena announced that it was almost certainly by Goya's collaborator Asensio Juliá, reading the letters "A. J." in the paint; a 2009 study concluded only that it was by an unidentified follower. Glendinning answered that the marks were the first digits of an old inventory number, 176, and Jesusa Vega argued in 2012 that the painted figure eights matched Goya's own. Many Spanish scholars supported Goya's authorship, and in July 2021 the Prado returned the painting to him. The canvas measures 116 × 105 cm.