Inspired Rogue

IN THE BLAZING LIGHT--Max White--Dae//, Sloan & Pearce ($2.75).

In 1940 Author Max White fluttered the critics with a first novel (Tiger Tiger) about the life and lively loves of a fictional U.S. artist. Now he has romanticized the life and livelier loves of a historical tartar--Francisco Jose Goya y Lucientes, Spain's famed 18th-Century etcher and painter.

Lusty, peasant-born "Paco" Goya killed a string of bulls in the arenas of his native Aragon before he settled down to painting. He also killed a number of men in drunken street brawls, was once found near-dead himself, with a long dagger in his back. For a whim, he recklessly scaled the dizzy dome of St. Peter's in Rome, and carved his initials on the lantern that had been left there by Michelangelo. Soon after, he was imprisoned by the Inquisition for breaking into a convent and trying to kidnap a nun.

Academicians were scandalized when Artist Goya found favor with King Charles IV of Spain. An accomplished duelist, harpsichordist and guitar player, as well as an unrivaled Casanova, Goya delighted the ladies and enraged the courtiers. His intuition was as astonishing as his lack of tact. "You look like the kind of man who goes about [burning] harmless prostitutes," he once remarked to an amiable old monk, who later became a prominent member of the Inquisition. His amorous ferocity was equally pronounced. "If I loved a woman, I shouldn't hesitate to use intimidation if all other methods failed," he grimly told a young lady-of-title, who "shivered with pleasure."

Bitten Fruit. Goya found extramural solace with vivacious Maria Teresa, Duchess of Alba, whose reputation at court was as scandalous as his own. Warned a well-meaning friend: "This particular fruit already has lots of bites in it." But Goya paid no heed. When he saw Teresa, "a tingle of delicious pain hovered at the edge of [his] eyelids." Most of Author White's lively novel is the story of this 20-year attachment.

Goya's sketches and paintings of his aristocratic mistress became world-famed. He painted Teresa spread voluptuously on a divan, draped in white silk and gave the portrait to her husband. Then he painted her nude in the same posture, and kept it for himself.* Sometimes the Duchess graciously sent Goya's family tasty, palace-cooked tidbits on gold plates. Sensible Senora Goya used to eat the tidbits and keep the plates. When the Inquisition put a sleuth on the lovers' tracks, Goya caught the sleuth and calmly skinned the soles of his feet with a dagger. The book ends when the Duchess dies, and Goya, ferocious as ever but now stone deaf, embarks on an old age diversified with the turmoil and violence of Napoleon's invasion of Spain, which he reported in incomparable etchings.

*In Madrid, the present Duke of Alba is awaiting the result of his order to exhume the 13th Duchess of Alba in order to solve two 143-year-old mysteries: 1) did she die of poison? 2) was she the model for Goya's famed nude?

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