This article is about Francisco Goya, a Spanish painter. For other uses of the name Goya, see Goya (disambiguation).

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (March 30, 1746 – April 16, 1828) was a Spanish painter and engraver. He was born in Fuendetodos and later lived primarily in Madrid. Brought up in Zaragoza, at fourteen he was apprenticed to an artist friend of his father's (José Luzan). He married Josefa Bayeu (sister of Francisco Bayeu ) in 1773.

His later influence is significant since his art was both deeply subversive and subjective, at a time when these attitudes were not predominant. His emphasis on the foreground and faded background portends the work of Manet.

Goya was a portraitist of royalty and chronicler of history who produced a series of eighty prints that he titled Los Caprichos depicting what he called "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual." [1]

He painted the Spanish Royal Family, including Charles IV of Spain and Ferdinand VII. His themes go from merry festivals for tapestry draft cartons to scenes of war, fight and corpses. This evolution reflects the darkening of his temper. Modern doctors suspect that the lead in his pigments was poisoning him and was also the cause of his being deaf since 1792. Near the end of his life, he became reclusive and began producing frightening and obscure paintings of insanity, madness, and fantasy. The style of these "Black Paintings" prefigure Expressionism.

He retired to his Quinta del Sordo ("Deaf man's villa") after the French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte seized the power in Spain. Some of his paintings depict scenes of the horrors of the Peninsula War.

He died in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux.

The Nude Maja

The Clothed Maja

Many of Goya's works are on display at the Museo del Prado. Two of Goya's most famous pictures, shown above, are known as The Clothed Maja and The Nude Maja (La Maja vestida and La Maja desnuda). They depict the same woman in the same pose, clothed and naked respectively. La Maja Vestida was painted after outrage in Spanish society over the previous Desnuda. He refused to paint clothes on her, and so simply created a new painting.

Another one of his more famous works is "Saturn Devouring His Son", which displays a Greco-Roman mythological scene of the god Saturn consuming a child.

Biographies

• Goya by Lion Feuchtwanger (a biographical novel) ISBN 8476408838
• Goya by Robert Hughes, 2003, ISBN 1843430541

Cinema

His life is portrayed in several films:

• Goya in Bordeaux
• Volaverunt

External links

• The Sleep of Reason - article in World&I Magazine
• Open Directory category
• Open Directory category for the film "Goya in Bordeaux"
• Caprichos (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library)
• Desastres de la Guerra (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library)
• Francisco de Goya y Lucientes at Olga's Gallery