Piece stirs colossal debate

MADRID, Spain — For years Spain's famed Prado museum had its suspicions about one of its most prized Goyas. Now the museum says it is certain the painting is not by the 18th-century master.

The Prado's announcement last week about the "Colossus," a large oil painting depicting the torso of a giant bursting through the clouds as he marches above a terrified village, is causing a furor among experts, some of whom still believe the painting is genuine.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes' "Colossus" has always been one of the Prado's major attractions and a highlight of his series on Spain's war against Napoleon, whose troops invaded in 1808.

Doubts about its authenticity began to surface in the early 1990s, and grew in April when the museum unexpectedly excluded the painting from its blockbuster show "Goya in Times of War."

Then, last week, Manuela Mena, a Goya expert and the Prado's chief 18th century art conservationist, told Spain's El Pais newspaper that the painting is filled with stylistic points that don't square up to Goya's talent.

The giant's raised left arm is too crudely painted for such an expert on anatomy as Goya, she said, and his expertise in drawing bulls and other animals would never have let him depict them as they are in the painting.

"The painting is not by Goya's hand," she said. "Goya would never have painted it like that."

The museum, which continues to display the work in its Goya rooms, says fresh studies indicate the "Colossus" may be the work of a minor painter, Asensio Julia, a pupil and a workshop assistant of Goya's. One of the most significant findings, it says, are what appear to be Julia's initials at the bottom of the painting.

"The museum is certain it is not a Goya. That's for sure. What's not so clear is who actually painted it," a Prado spokeswoman told The Associated Press. She was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with museum policy.

Others disagree.

"I think it's a Goya," Nigel Glendinning, a leading British art historian and Goya expert, said.

Glendinning dismissed Mena's argument about the crude style of the work, saying Goya rarely went for specific details in his paintings, often preferring broad and rough brush strokes.