Francisco Goya

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Born: 1746

Died: 1828

Summary of Francisco Goya

When it comes to Western art, Goya is considered both an Old Master and the first truly contemporary artist. Romanticism’s emphasis on subjectivity, imagination, and passion may be seen in his prints and subsequent private paintings, particularly in his later works. Furthermore, Goya was an acute observer of the world around him, and his art reflected the tumultuous events of his day, from the Enlightenment’s liberations to the suppression of the Inquisition’s persecutions to the horrors of war following Napoleon’s invasion. Goya’s painting had a profound influence on later modern artists, both for its originality and political participation. He paved the way for the Surrealists like Salvador Dal with his exploration of weird and dreamy subjects in the Caprichos, which depict scenes from the Peninsular War. Contemporary artists have drawn inspiration from Goya’s macabre imagery and stinging societal commentary, which endures into the 21st century.

The opulent virtuoso manner of Goya’s official portraits of the Spanish Court highlights the wealth and authority of the royal household. It has also been argued that the works convey subtly critical comments about the ineffective ruler and their circle.

As one of the best printmakers ever, Goya is known for his mastery of aquatints and engravings. The Caprichos, Proverbios, Tauromaquia, and The Disasters of War were the four major print portfolios he produced during his career. It’s possible that these works provide a better reflection of the artist’s creativity and political views than his paintings. Drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, his etchings cover a wide range of topics, ranging from the fantastical and surreal to the downright absurd and sarcastic.

Among Goya’s most daring and forward-thinking depictions are those of his majas (the flamboyant and outrageous lower-class women of Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries), witches, and queens, all of whom show women in control of their own destiny, whether political or sexual. Goya’s private life has been the subject of much speculation thanks to several of these works, such as the rumoured affair between Goya and the Duchess of Alba.

Goya’s final works are among his most sinister and enigmatic. His so-called “Black Paintings,” a series of 14 paintings from his farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid, depict violence, sorrow, evil, and a sense of desire. Artworks by an elderly, deaf, and disillusioned deaf artist who was trying to keep his head above water. Expressionist and Surrealist artists of the 20th century would have been inspired by their examination of the dark forces at work in the artist’s subconscious.

Biography of Francisco Goya

Childhood

Fuendetodos, Spain-born painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was raised in an upper-class family. He was born the fourth of six children and grew up in Zaragoza, where his family had originally come from. One of Goya’s rare surviving first-person accounts of his early years in Madrid comes from the letters he wrote to his close friend Martin Zapater while attending a local public school.

He began his creative training at the age of 14 under the tutelage of painter Jose Luzan. His formal training lasted for four years. The German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, who served as court painter to the Spanish royal family, took him to Madrid where he studied for a time. It is widely believed that Goya and Mengs did not get along, and both of his submissions to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABAF) in 1763 and 1766 were denied.

Early Life

Around 1770, Goya moved to Italy, where his career began to take shape, though the specifics of his time there remain a mystery. In 1771 he received second place in a painting competition held in Parma with his Sacrifice to Pan. Since then he has been studying with Francisco Bayeu in Saragossa and they have become very close friends. Goya married Bayeu’s sister, Josefa, with whom he had several children, however only one son, Javier, survived to adulthood. People in Madrid would stop and stare at Goya’s son because he was so handsome, and Goya was a proud parent. When his kid grew unwell, Goya said that he “stopped living for that long term.”

Around 1774, Goya was commissioned to produce a series of cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Manufacture at Santa Barbara. These paintings represent scenes from contemporary Spanish life in a joyful and light-toned Rococo manner; the resulting tapestries were displayed in two royal palaces. Goya utilised this experience to expand his relationships within the Spanish court. At the same time he also began to work on a group of etchings following paintings by Velázquez in the royal collection. When it came to expressing his most intimate thoughts and sentiments about current social and political events, Goya turned to printmaking, which he mastered like no other medium.

Mid Life

During the reign of Charles III in 1786, Goya began working as a royal artist. In 1799, he became Charles IV’s First Court Painter, the most prestigious post for an artist in the royal household. He remained in this position until the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, despite pledging his support to the Bonapartists and receiving new commissions from the new regime.

The renowned Nude Maja was one of many Goya paintings that Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy commissioned for his personal collection during the height of his courtly friendship with the artist (c. 1797-1800). Inquisitional allegations about Godoy’s extramarital encounters with two different ladies were stoked by this artwork, which sparked widespread inquiry about the true identity of the sitter.

As Goya’s career was taking off, a sickness that went undetected for several months in 1792 left him irreversibly deaf for the rest of his life. The fact that he continued to work for the Spanish royal family didn’t stop him from withdrawing from public life, but his disability did. Goya began working on Los Caprichos, a series of 80 etchings with aquatint that was released in 1799 at this time. The prints are an indictment of a wide range of current Spanish issues.

Going to Spain in 1808 and the subsequent Peninsular War (1808-1814) provided Goya plenty of time to examine and analyse society for the artist’s own purposes. Second and Third of May 1808 as well as his etchings titled The Disasters of War were all inspired by his time in the military. Goya’s “prodigious blooming of wrath” in the midst of so much bloodshed and horror is captured in these works, according to author Evan Connell.

Late Life

A great deal is unknown about the last years of Goya’s life after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. The House of the Deaf Man, a farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid, became his new home, and it was there that he painted 14 works known as the Black Paintings, which were painted directly onto the plaster walls of that home. For the sake of freedom, Goya left Spain in 1824 and settled in Bordeaux. While in exile in France with Leocadia Weiss (his wife Josefa had died in 1812), the artist would live out the rest of his days with the family until his death in the year 1828.

Goya’s work is a rare example of a fusion of old and new. Old Masters like Velázquez and Rembrandt influenced him, and he worked in a conventional style as evidenced by his many court portraits. Furthermore, he is considered one of the earliest Modern Western artists because of his daring break from aesthetic conventions of his period. James Ensor, for example, used the same tactic of social satire in his works to ridicule the duped and corrupt leaders of his time, while contemporary artists like Damien Hirst and Paul McCarthy are interested in the abject and psychologically disturbed, as seen in Ensor’s more dark or violent works.

Paintings by Goya were a precursor to impressionism because of their large, clearly visible brushstrokes and their Spanish subject matter. With Olympia, Manet reimagined nudity as the modern-day prostitute in the same way that Goya had done in his Nude Maja painting. Meanwhile, Manet’s fragmentary painting of The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, strongly references Goya’s 1808 masterpiece The Third of May, 1808 in both its expression of moral anger and its formal design, but his sympathies were with the Mexican executioners, not the martyred Emperor.

With his socially conscious, profoundly personal, and inventive work, Goya helped pave the way for modernism. Many of Goya’s subjects, including war, corruption, social evils, and rooted superstitions were subjected to his scathing criticism in his prints. Picasso, a fellow Spaniard, would be inspired by this, as he raged against the Fascist bombing of a Spanish village during World War II in his famous Guernica.

With his etchings and Black Paintings, Francisco de Goya left an indelible mark on Surrealism with its melancholy and surrealistic subject matter. It was Salvador Dali’s version of the Caprichos that first came to light in 1973, and in 2014, contemporary artist Emily Lombardo did the same. In their own ways, Dal’s surrealist and Lombardo’s queer feminist interpretations of Goya’s prints demonstrate the artist’s persistent, universal, and ultimately adaptable legacy. Inspired by Goya, the British twins Jake and Dinos Chapman created monstrous sculptures inspired by The Disasters of War.

Francisco Goya Facts

What is Francisco Goya known for?

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Francisco Goya was one of Europe’s best painters and printmakers. While he is considered a modern artist, he is also considered an Old Master. His work represented current events and had a lasting impact on a generation of artists to come.

What happened to Francisco Goya?

Later in life, Goya made his way to Bordeaux, France, where he lived out the rest of his days. He continued to paint while he was in this state. Portraits of pals who were also exiles appeared in some of his later works. Goya died at Bordeaux, France, on April 16, 1828.

What is the message of Francisco Goya paintings?

His so-called “Black Paintings,” a series of 14 paintings from his farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid, depict violence, misery, evil, and longing. Artworks by an elderly, deaf, and disillusioned deaf artist who was trying to keep his head above water.

How old was Francisco Goya when he died?

Francisco Goya was 82 when he died in 1828

Famous Art by Francisco Goya

The Black Duchess

1797

When it comes to his ties with members of Spain’s social elite, Goya was a target of rumours and scandal. The 13th Duchess of Alba, Maria Cayetana de Silva, one of Spain’s most renowned women, was suspected of having an affair with him. In 1796, after the death of the Duke of Alba, their relationship most likely began (Goya had painted portraits of both husband and wife in 1795). This regal beauty, with her voluptuous body and alabaster skin, would have captured Goya’s attention, no doubt.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

1797-1799

In addition to his paintings, Goya is regarded as one of the greatest etching and aquatint artists of all time. An 80-plate print series called Los Caprichos is one of four major series by him. For the artist, illustrating “the numerous foibles and follies to be found in any civilised society, and from the prevalent biases or dishonest practises which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have rendered normal” was the goal of the series. An unknown sickness left him deaf and forced him to self-imposed exile in 1796, when he began working on plates.

The Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda)

1797-1800

One of Goya’s first commissions from Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy was the Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda). Unknown model, possibly Godoy’s mistress Pepita Tudo or the Duchess of Alba, whom Goya is said to have had an affair with, is depicted in the picture. The bare-chested woman is seen lying cross-legged on a green velvet chaise longue. Voluptuous and sensual, her cheeks are flushed with a post-coital blush, and her body is oriented toward the viewer. With the naked Maja, Goya defied expectations by depicting a human woman (rather than a goddess or an allegorical figure) with pubic hair and looking directly at the viewer; these bold features would impact later modern artists like Manet, whose Olympia is undoubtedly inspired by the nude Maja.

Charles IV of Spain and His Family

1800

In his prime as a court artist, Goya painted this picture of the Spanish royal family. The brutally (some might say grotesquely) realistic renderings of the sitter in this painting signify a new direction for the artist compared to his earlier society and court portraits, which adhered more closely to the genre’s standards of flattery. Based on Velázquez’s Las Meninas, the artist incorporated a self-portrait of the artist while he painted the royal family into the composition. A shadowy Goya stands before a large canvas (perhaps the same one we see today) in the far left background, his back to us.

An Heroic feat! With Dead Men!

1810

Following Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and the ensuing six-year battle, Goya responded with an 82-print suite. They are titled The Disasters of War, and they are separated into three sections: one depicts images from Spain’s Peninsular War, another a famine that struck Madrid in 1811-12, and the third a sequence of cartoons satirising King Ferdinand VII’s authoritarian regime in an allegorical fashion. Remarkable and frightening images depict the rapes, torture, and violence of both the French and Spanish armies in the collection Some events represented by Goya were based on second-hand stories or the artist’s imagination, even though Goya had been an eyewitness at its inception and witnessed the conflict firsthand. Without Goya’s Disasters, it’s hard to picture 20th-century war photography (such the iconic photographs from the My Lai slaughter in Vietnam).

The Third of May, 1808

1814

It was in 1808 when Napoleon’s army invaded Spain, bringing an end to Charles IV’s rule and the Enlightenment Era in Spain. The Spanish government commissioned Goya to paint The Third of May, 1808 and its companion work, The Second of May, 1808, to commemorate the evacuation of the French troops from Spain in 1814. “Perpetuate with his brush the most famous and courageous events of our magnificent rebellion against Europe’s Tyrant,” was the stated goal of the paintings.

Witches’ Sabbath

1821-1823

Throughout his later years, Goya remained a loner, disillusioned with society. La Quinta del Sordo, a villa outside of Madrid, is where he created the fourteen Black Paintings, which were painted with oils directly on the plaster walls of the house. Goya didn’t write about these pictures in letters or give them titles, so we don’t know what he was trying to convey when he painted them. Art historians have viewed them as a reflection of his deteriorating physical and mental well-being. Goya’s darkest fears and deepest depression are expressed in these disturbing works, which are disturbing in their nightmare substance and their raw form.

Saturn Devouring His Son

1821-1823

Another of Goya’s “Black Paintings” from La Quinta del Sordo, Saturn Devouring His Son depicts a Saturn devouring his son. Titan Kronus ate his sons because he feared one of them would overthrow him in the Greek mythology (Saturn is the Romanized version of Titan). Using Saturn’s small head and huge eyes, Saturn sucks on his son’s arm. Similar to the wounded corpse in The Disasters of War, the scarlet blood gushing from his wounds is almost frighteningly vivid in the dreary, underground hue. His passion in dark and harrowing themes, whether documented or legendary, is exemplified in this piece.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

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• When it comes to Western art, Goya is considered both an Old Master and the first truly contemporary artist.
• Romanticism’s emphasis on subjectivity, imagination, and passion may be seen in his prints and subsequent private paintings, particularly in his latter works.
• Furthermore, Goya was an acute observer of the world around him, and his art reflected the tumultuous events of his day, from the Enlightenment’s liberations to the suppression of the Inquisition’s persecutions to the horrors of war following Napoleon’s invasion.
• Goya’s painting had a profound influence on later modern artists, both for its originality and political participation.
• He paved the way for the Surrealists like Salvador Dal with his exploration of weird and dreamy subjects in the Caprichos, which depict scenes from the Peninsular War.
• Contemporary artists have drawn inspiration from Goya’s macabre imagery and stinging societal commentary, which endures into the 21st century.

• The opulent virtuoso manner of Goya’s official portraits of the Spanish Court highlights the wealth and authority of the royal household.
• It has also been argued that the works convey subtly critical comments about the ineffective ruler and their circle.
• As one of the best printmakers ever, Goya is known for his mastery of aquatints and engravings.
• The Caprichos, Proverbios, Tauromaquia, and The Disasters of War were the four major print portfolios he produced during his career.
• It’s possible that these works provide a better reflection of the artist’s creativity and political views than his paintings.
• Drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources, his etchings cover a wide range of topics, ranging from the fantastical and surreal to the downright absurd and sarcastic.
• Among Goya’s most daring and forward-thinking depictions are those of his majas (the flamboyant and outrageous lower-class women of Spain in the 18th and 19th centuries), witches, and queens, all of whom show women in control of their own destiny, whether political or sexual.
• Goya’s private life has been the subject of much speculation thanks to several of these works, such as the rumoured affair between Goya and the Duchess of Alba.
• Goya’s final works are among his most sinister and enigmatic.
• His so-called “Black Paintings,” a series of 14 paintings from his farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid, depict violence, sorrow, evil, and a sense of desire.
• Artworks by an elderly, deaf, and disillusioned deaf artist who was trying to keep his head above water.
• Expressionist and Surrealist artists of the 20th century would have been inspired by their examination of the dark forces at work in the artist’s subconscious.

• ChildhoodFuendetodos, Spain-born painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was raised in an upper-class family.
• He was born the fourth of six children and grew up in Zaragoza, where his family had originally come from.
• One of Goya’s rare surviving first-person accounts of his early years in Madrid comes from the letters he wrote to his close friend Martin Zapater while attending a local public school.
• He began his creative training at the age of 14 under the tutelage of painter Jose Luzan.
• His formal training lasted for four years.
• The German artist Anton Raphael Mengs, who served as court painter to the Spanish royal family, took him to Madrid where he studied for a time.
• It is widely believed that Goya and Mengs did not get along, and both of his submissions to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABAF) in 1763 and 1766 were denied.
• Early LifeAround 1770, Goya moved to Italy, where his career began to take shape, though the specifics of his time there remain a mystery.
• In 1771 he received second place in a painting competition held in Parma with his Sacrifice to Pan.
• Since then he has been studying with Francisco Bayeu in Saragossa and they have become very close friends.
• Goya married Bayeu’s sister, Josefa, with whom he had several children, however only one son, Javier, survived to adulthood.
• People in Madrid would stop and stare at Goya’s son because he was so handsome, and Goya was a proud parent.
• When his kid grew unwell, Goya said that he “stopped living for that long term.”

• Around 1774, Goya was commissioned to produce a series of cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Manufacture at Santa Barbara.
• These paintings represent scenes from contemporary Spanish life in a joyful and light-toned Rococo manner; the resulting tapestries were displayed in two royal palaces.
• Goya utilised this experience to expand his relationships within the Spanish court.
• At the same time he also began to work on a group of etchings following paintings by Velázquez in the royal collection.
• When it came to expressing his most intimate thoughts and sentiments about current social and political events, Goya turned to printmaking, which he mastered like no other medium.
• Mid LifeDuring the reign of Charles III in 1786, Goya began working as a royal artist.
• In 1799, he became Charles IV’s First Court Painter, the most prestigious post for an artist in the royal household.
• He remained in this position until the Napoleonic invasion of 1808, despite pledging his support to the Bonapartists and receiving new commissions from the new regime.

• The renowned Nude Maja was one of many Goya paintings that Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy commissioned for his personal collection during the height of his courtly friendship with the artist (c. 1797-1800).
• Inquisitional allegations about Godoy’s extramarital encounters with two different ladies were stoked by this artwork, which sparked widespread inquiry about the true identity of the sitter.
• As Goya’s career was taking off, a sickness that went undetected for several months in 1792 left him irreversibly deaf for the rest of his life.
• The fact that he continued to work for the Spanish royal family didn’t stop him from withdrawing from public life, but his disability did.
• Goya began working on Los Caprichos, a series of 80 etchings with aquatint that was released in 1799 at this time.
• The prints are an indictment of a wide range of current Spanish issues.
• Going to Spain in 1808 and the subsequent Peninsular War (1808-1814) provided Goya plenty of time to examine and analyse society for the artist’s own purposes.

• Second and Third of May 1808 as well as his etchings titled The Disasters of War were all inspired by his time in the military.
• Late LifeA great deal is unknown about the last years of Goya’s life after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814.
• The House of the Deaf Man, a farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid, became his new home, and it was there that he painted 14 works known as the Black Paintings, which were painted directly onto the plaster walls of that home.
• For the sake of freedom, Goya left Spain in 1824 and settled in Bordeaux.
• While in exile in France with Leocadia Weiss (his wife Josefa had died in 1812), the artist would live out the rest of his days with the family until his death in the year 1828.Goya’s work is a rare example of a fusion of old and new.
• Old Masters like Velázquez and Rembrandt influenced him, and he worked in a conventional style as evidenced by his many court portraits.
• Furthermore, he is considered one of the earliest Modern Western artists because of his daring break from aesthetic conventions of his period.
• James Ensor, for example, used the same tactic of social satire in his works to ridicule the duped and corrupt leaders of his time, while contemporary artists like Damien Hirst and Paul McCarthy are interested in the abject and psychologically disturbed, as seen in Ensor’s more dark or violent works.

• Paintings by Goya were a precursor to impressionism because of their large, clearly visible brushstrokes and their Spanish subject matter.
• With Olympia, Manet reimagined nudity as the modern-day prostitute in the same way that Goya had done in his Nude Maja painting.
• Meanwhile, Manet’s fragmentary painting of The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, strongly references Goya’s 1808 masterpiece The Third of May, 1808 in both its expression of moral anger and its formal design, but his sympathies were with the Mexican executioners, not the martyred Emperor.
• With his socially conscious, profoundly personal, and inventive work, Goya helped pave the way for modernism.
• Many of Goya’s subjects, including war, corruption, social evils, and rooted superstitions were subjected to his scathing criticism in his prints.
• Picasso, a fellow Spaniard, would be inspired by this, as he raged against the Fascist bombing of a Spanish village during World War II in his famous Guernica.
• With his etchings and Black Paintings, Francisco de Goya left an indelible mark on Surrealism with its melancholy and surrealistic subject matter.

• It was Salvador Dali’s version of the Caprichos that first came to light in 1973, and in 2014, contemporary artist Emily Lombardo did the same.
• In their own ways, Dal’s surrealist and Lombardo’s queer feminist interpretations of Goya’s prints demonstrate the artist’s persistent, universal, and ultimately adaptable legacy.
• Inspired by Goya, the British twins Jake and Dinos Chapman created monstrous sculptures inspired by The Disasters of War.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.

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