GOYA Y LUCIENTES, Francisco de (Fuendetodos, 1746 – Bordeaux, 1828)
Goya trained as a painter in Saragossa, in the study of José Luzán. In 1763 and 1766 he unsuccessfully entered a competition at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. Four years later, in 1770, he travelled to Italy, where he studied the great masters and submitted one of his paintings to a competition held by the Academy in Parma, where he was awarded a honourable mention. When in 1771 he returned to Saragossa, he undertook the decoration of the Virgin’s coreto (small choir) in the Basilica of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and eleven mural paintings for the Cartuja de Aula Dei.
In 1775 Goya moved to Madrid, to work in the Santa Barbara Royal Tapestry Factory, thanks to the support of the painter Mengs. His first commission was a series of cartoons for the princes’ dining room in El Escorial. This was followed by other commissions of scenes from everyday life to decorate several rooms in the Palace of El Pardo; thus Goya began to assert himself as a painter within the Rococo tradition. In 1778 he published a series of etchings based on paintings by Velázquez. Two years later he submitted his Christ on the Cross to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and as a result he was elected a member of it. At approximately the same time he was commissioned the decoration of two cupolas of the Basilica of El Pilar. Francisco Bayeu—the project supervisor—did not approve of Goya’s designs, which led to their confrontation; both painters would come together again in the early 1780s in the decoration of the altar of San Francisco el Grande, Madrid.
In 1783 Goya portrayed the Count of Floridablanca, this being his first important commission as a portraitist. In the following years, his dedication to this genre allowed him to free himself from the constrictions of the tapestry cartoons and the commissions of religious paintings. The skill with which he conjured up the reflections and effects of the light—following Velázquez’s example—and his ability to grasp the psychology of the sitter soon rewarded him with official recognition, as the king appointed him royal painter in 1786 and court painter in 1789.
At the end of 1792 Goya became seriously ill due to lead poisoning—an element often used by painters—and he lost his hearing almost completely. During the following years he developed the sublime aspect of his oeuvre, already anticipated in paintings like St. Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent, painted for the Cathedral of Valencia in 1788. In the period following his illness he executed a group of cabinet works with subjects such bullfights, shipwrecks and scenes in lunatic asylums and prisons, submitted to the Real Academia de San Fernando in 1794. A year later Goya was appointed director of the painting department of this institution, and he executed several portraits of the Duchess of Alba, with whom he travelled the following year to her estate in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cadiz. In 1798 Goya undertook the decoration of the ceilings of the chapel of San Antonio de la Florida, using a realistic style with broad brushstrokes, quite different from his early religious compositions. The following year he published his series of etchings Los caprichos, conceived as a grotesque satire of the contemporary customs and superstitions. That same year of 1799 he was appointed first court painter and in 1800–1801 he finished the large painting The Family of Charles IV. From the same period are The Naked Maja—probably commissioned by Godoy, Charles IV’s Prime Minister—and The Clothed Maja.
Goya, who witnessed the brutal events of the War of Independence (1808–1812), recorded several episodes of the fight against the French troops and of the famine in Madrid during the occupation and the immediate post–war period in the series of etchings entitled The Disasters of War, executed between 1810 and 1815 but published after his death. In 1814 he also painted The Charge of Mamelukes and The Shootings of 3 May, large historical compositions, both in a pre–romantic style, on the subject of the uprising against the French in Madrid in May 1808. In 1816 Goya published the series of etchings entitled Tauromachy. That same year he also started the series Los disparates, with fantastic scenes of difficult interpretation, which he left unfinished and which was also published after his death.
In February 1819 Goya acquired a house in the outskirts of Madrid, called “La Quinta del Sordo”. During the years he spent there—after a new convalescence in 1819—he filled the walls with scenes of witchcraft, death, cannibalism, etc., known as Black paintings, whose expressionism and formal simplicity have no precedents. In 1824 Goya asked king Ferdinand VII to give him leave to go to France. He visited Paris and settled in Bordeaux. There he continued working, particularly in the execution of drawings and engravings, until he died on 16 April 1828. In 1900 his remains were moved to Madrid and from 1919 they lie in the chapel of San Antonio de la Florida.
J A L M
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