Francisco de Goya
Biography and Paintings of Spanish Artist Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
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Goya (1746-1828)

The Spanish artist Francisco de Goya is considered one of the key precursors of modern art. His portrait art, figure drawing and printmaking documented important historical events in late 18th/early 19th century Spain. He is best known for his bold emotive paintings of violence especially those recording the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. His most notable works include The Nude Maja (c.1800), The Clothed Maja (c.1803), The Third of May 1808 (1814) and Saturn Devouring his Son (1819), all housed at the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Goya was born in 1746, in Zaragoza, a small village in Northern Spain. A few years late the family moved to Saragossa and his father gained employment as a gilder.

At the age of about 14, Goya went to work as an apprentice to a local painter called Jose Luzan who taught him drawing and as was customary at the time, the young Goya spent hours copying prints of Old Masters. At the age of 17 Goya moved to Madrid and came under the influence of Venetian artist and printmaker Giambattista Tiepolo and painter Antonio Raphael Mengs. In 1770, he moved to Rome where he won second prize in a fine art painting contest organized by the City of Parma. His first major commission came in 1774 to design 42 patterns which were to be used decorate the stone walls of El Escorial and the Palacio Real de El Pardo, the new residents of the Spanish Monarchy. This work brought him to the attention of the Spanish Monarchy which eventually resulted in him being appointed Painter to the King in 1786.

Goya was a keen observer of humanity, and he was constantly making sketches of everyday life. However after contracting a fever in 1792 Goya was left permanently deaf by his illness. Isolated from people by his deafness, he retreated into his imagination and a new style started to evolve - more satirical, and close to caricature.

He published the Caprichos in 1799, a series of etchings satirizing human weakness. He became more expressive in his works which echoed El Greco many years before him. His works span a period of more than 60 years, and as time went on he became more critical of the world. He became bitter and disillusioned with society as the world around him changed, and he expressed these emotions through his art. He received a commission in 1808 by the provisional government of Spain to commemorate the Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s army during the occupation of 1808. As a response he painted the ‘Third of May 1808’, which is generally acknowledged as one of the first true paintings of modern art. The work is blunt, powerful and humane.

However, around this time there was growing macabre quality to his works which can be seen for example in his Fantasy and Invention series of paintings, 1793 - a dramatic nightmarish fantasy with lunatics in a courtyard. As he completed these series of paintings, Goya himself was going through a nervous breakdown. He became shrouded in black thoughts which culminated in his painting Saturn Devouring his Son, 1819.

Other important works including The Incantation, 1797 (Lazaro Galdiano Foundation, Madrid), The Colossus, 1808 (Museo del Prado, Madrid) and Group on a Balcony, 1810 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

In 1824, after much political upheaval in Spain, Goya decided to go into exile in France. He continued to work there until his death in 1828, at the age of 82. Towards the end of his life he became more reclusive, slipping deeper into madness and fantasy.

Goya's role in the history of art is not limited simply to his supreme portraiture. In addition to his mastery of printing, his dramatic painting style influenced a great deal of nineteenth century French art and his works became the precursor to the Expressionist movement. He is considered one of the most famous artists of Spain, arguably second only to Pablo Picasso.

...For details about the life and works of one of the great painters of the High Renaissance, see Michelangelo.

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