Francisco Goya
Francisco de Goya | |
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Josefa Bayeu (m. 1773) | |
Signature | |
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (/ˈɡɔɪə/; Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko xoˈse ðe ˈɣoʝa i luˈθjentes]; 30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.[1] His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters.[2] Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.[3]
Goya was born to a middle-class family in 1746, in
Although Goya's letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts. He had a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 that left him deaf, after which his work became progressively darker and pessimistic. His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels, and contrast with his social climbing. He was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France. In 1799, Goya became Primer Pintor de Cámara (Prime Court Painter), the highest rank for a Spanish court painter. In the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1800–01, he painted Charles IV of Spain and His Family, also influenced by Velázquez.
In 1807,
His late period culminates with the
Early years (1746–1771)
Francisco de Goya was born in
His mother's family had pretensions of nobility and the house, a modest brick cottage, was owned by her family and, perhaps fancifully, bore their
Visit to Italy
At age 14 Goya studied under the painter
Rome was then the cultural capital of Europe and held all the prototypes of classical antiquity, while Spain lacked a coherent artistic direction, with all of its significant visual achievements in the past. Having failed to earn a scholarship, Goya relocated at his own expense to Rome in the old tradition of European artists stretching back at least to Albrecht Dürer.[12] He was an unknown at the time and so the records are scant and uncertain. Early biographers have him travelling to Rome with a gang of bullfighters, where he worked as a street acrobat, or for a Russian diplomat, or fell in love with a beautiful young nun whom he plotted to abduct from her convent.[13] It is possible that Goya completed two surviving mythological paintings during the visit, a Sacrifice to Vesta and a Sacrifice to Pan, both dated 1771.[14]
In 1771 he won second prize in a painting competition organized by the City of
Madrid (1775–1789)
Francisco Bayeu (Josefa Bayeu's brother), 1765 membership of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and directorship of the tapestry works from 1777 helped Goya earn a commission for a series of tapestry cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory. Over five years he designed some 42 patterns, many of which were used to decorate and insulate the stone walls of El Escorial and the Palacio Real del Pardo, the residences of the Spanish monarchs. While designing tapestries was neither prestigious nor well paid, his cartoons are mostly popularist in a rococo style, and Goya used them to bring himself to wider attention.[18]
The cartoons were not his only royal commissions, and were accompanied by a series of engravings, mostly copies after old masters such as Marcantonio Raimondi and Velázquez. Goya had a complicated relationship to the latter artist; while many of his contemporaries saw folly in Goya's attempts to copy and emulate him, he had access to a wide range of the long-dead painter's works that had been contained in the royal collection.[19] Nonetheless, etching was a medium that the young artist was to master, a medium that was to reveal both the true depths of his imagination and his political beliefs.[20] His c. 1779 etching of The Garrotted Man ("El agarrotado"[21]) was the largest work he had produced to date, and an obvious foreboding of his later "Disasters of War" series.[22]
Goya was beset by illness, and his condition was used against him by his rivals, who looked jealously upon any artist seen to be rising in stature. Some of the larger cartoons, such as The Wedding, were more than 8 by 10 feet, and had proved a drain on his physical strength. Ever resourceful, Goya turned this misfortune around, claiming that his illness had allowed him the insight to produce works that were more personal and informal.[23] However, he found the format limiting, as it did not allow him to capture complex color shifts or texture, and was unsuited to the impasto and glazing techniques he was by then applying to his painted works. The tapestries seem as comments on human types, fashion and fads.[24]
Other works from the period include a canvas for the altar of the
Court painter
In 1783, the
Goya was appointed court painter to Charles IV in 1789. The following year he became First Court Painter, with a salary of 50,000
Goya earned commissions from the highest ranks of the
Middle period (1793–1799)
La Maja Desnuda (La maja desnuda) has been described as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art" without pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning.
At some time between late 1792 and early 1793 an undiagnosed illness left Goya deaf. He became withdrawn and introspective while the direction and tone of his work changed. He began the series of
While convalescing between 1793 and 1794, Goya completed a set of eleven small pictures painted on tin that mark a significant change in the tone and subject matter of his art, and draw from the dark and dramatic realms of fantasy nightmare. Yard with Lunatics is a vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation. The condemnation of brutality towards prisoners (whether criminal or insane) is a subject that Goya assayed in later works[36] that focused on the degradation of the human figure.[37] It was one of the first of Goya's mid-1790s cabinet paintings, in which his earlier search for ideal beauty gave way to an examination of the relationship between naturalism and fantasy that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career.[38] He was undergoing a nervous breakdown and entering prolonged physical illness,[39] and admitted that the series was created to reflect his own self-doubt, anxiety and fear that he was losing his mind.[40] Goya wrote that the works served "to occupy my imagination, tormented as it is by contemplation of my sufferings."[41] The series, he said, consisted of pictures which "normally find no place in commissioned works."[citation needed]
Goya's physical and mental breakdown seems to have happened a few weeks after the French declaration of war on Spain. A contemporary reported, "The noises in his head and deafness aren't improving, yet his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance."[42] These symptoms may indicate a prolonged viral encephalitis, or possibly a series of miniature strokes resulting from high blood pressure and which affected the hearing and balance centers of the brain. Symptoms of tinnitus, episodes of imbalance and progressive deafness are typical of Ménière's disease.[43] It is possible that Goya had cumulative lead poisoning, as he used massive amounts of lead white—which he ground himself[44]—in his paintings, both as a canvas primer and as a primary color.[45][46]
Other postmortem diagnostic assessments point toward paranoid dementia, possibly due to brain trauma, as evidenced by marked changes in his work after his recovery, culminating in the "black" paintings.[47] Art historians have noted Goya's singular ability to express his personal demons as horrific and fantastic imagery that speaks universally, and allows his audience to find its own catharsis in the images.[48]
Peninsular War (1808–1814)
The French army invaded Spain in 1808, leading to the
Although Goya did not make his intention known when creating The Disasters of War, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808
The first 47 plates in the series focus on incidents from the war and show the consequences of the conflict on individual soldiers and civilians. The middle series (plates 48 to 64) record the effects of the famine that hit Madrid in 1811–12, before the city was liberated from the French. The final 17 reflect the bitter disappointment of liberals when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and opposed both state and religious reform. Since their first publication, Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage".[51]
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The Third of May 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas, 266 cm × 345 cm (105 in × 136 in). Museo del Prado, Madrid
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The Second of May 1808, 1814
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Plate 4: Las mujeres dan valor (The women are courageous). This plate depicts a struggle between a group of civilians fighting soldiers.
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Plate 5: Y son fieras (And they are fierce or And they fight like wild beasts). Civilian women fight against soldiers with spears and rocks.
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Plate 46: Esto es malo (This is bad). A monk is killed by French soldiers looting church treasures. A rare sympathetic image of clergy generally shown on the side of oppression and injustice.[52]
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Plate 47: Así sucedió (This is how it happened). The last print in the first group. Murdered monks lie by French soldiers looting church treasures.
His works from 1814 to 1819 are mostly commissioned portraits, but also include the altarpiece of
Quinta del Sordo and Black Paintings (1819–1822)
Records of Goya's later life are relatively scant, and ever politically aware, he suppressed a number of his works from this period, working instead in private.[53] He was tormented by a dread of old age and fear of madness.[54] Goya had been a successful and royally placed artist, but withdrew from public life during his final years. From the late 1810s he lived in near-solitude outside Madrid in a farmhouse converted into a studio. The house had become known as "La Quinta del Sordo" (The House of the Deaf Man), after the nearest farmhouse that had coincidentally also belonged to a deaf man.[55]
Art historians assume Goya felt alienated from the social and political trends that followed the 1814
At the age of 75, alone and in mental and physical despair, he completed the work of his 14 Black Paintings,[C] all of which were executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house. Goya did not intend for the paintings to be exhibited, did not write of them,[D] and likely never spoke of them.[58] Around 1874, 50 years after his death, they were taken down and transferred to a canvas support by owner Baron Frédéric Émile d'Erlanger. Many of the works were significantly altered during the restoration, and in the words of Arthur Lubow what remain are "at best a crude facsimile of what Goya painted."[59] The effects of time on the murals, coupled with the inevitable damage caused by the delicate operation of mounting the crumbling plaster on canvas, meant that most of the murals suffered extensive damage and loss of paint. Today, they are on permanent display at the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Bordeaux (October 1824 – 1828)
Not much is known about her beyond her fiery temperament. She was likely related to the Goicoechea family, a wealthy dynasty into which the artist's son, Javier, had married. It is known that Leocadia had an unhappy marriage with a jeweler, Isidore Weiss, but was separated from him since 1811, after he had accused her of "illicit conduct". She had two children before that time, and bore a third, Rosario, in 1814 when she was 26. Isidore was not the father, and it has often been speculated—although with little firm evidence—that the child belonged to Goya.[66] There has been much speculation that Goya and Weiss were romantically linked; however, it is more likely the affection between them was sentimental.[67]
Goya died on 16 April 1828.[68] Leocadia was left nothing in Goya's will; mistresses were often omitted in such circumstances, but it is also likely that he did not want to dwell on his mortality by thinking about or revising his will. She wrote to a number of Goya's friends to complain of her exclusion but many of her friends were Goya's also and by then were old men or had died, and did not reply. Largely destitute, she moved into rented accommodation, later passing on her copy of the Caprichos for free.[69]
Goya's body was later re-interred in the Real Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid. Goya's skull was missing, a detail the Spanish consul immediately communicated to his superiors in Madrid, who wired back, "Send Goya, with or without head."[70]
Films and television
- Goya: Crazy Like a Genius (2002), a documentary by Ian MacMillan, presented by Robert Hughes
- Goya's Ghosts (2006), directed by Miloš Forman
- Volavérunt (1999), directed by Bigas Luna and based on the novel by Antonio Larreta
- Goya in Bordeaux (1999), Spanish historical drama film written and directed by Carlos Saura about the life of Francisco de Goya
- Goya or the Hard Way to Enlightenment (1971) (German: Goya – oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis) is a 1971 East German drama film directed by Konrad Wolf. It was entered into the 7th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Special Prize. It is based on a novel with the same title by Lion Feuchtwanger.
- Duchess of Alba; Anthony Franciosa played Goya and Ava Gardnerplayed The Duchess.
- Tiempo de ilustrados (Time of the Enlightened) in the series The Ministry of Time. Goya (played by Pedro Casablanc) must repaint La maja desnudaafter a cult called the Exterminating Angels destroy it.
Goya's influence on modern and contemporary artists and writers
- The Spanish composer Enrique Granados wrote a suite for solo piano in 1911 based on Goya's paintings called Goyescas, and later wrote an opera of the same name based on the suite.
- In the early 20th century, Spanish masters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí drew influence from Los caprichos and the Black Paintings of Goya.[71]
- In the 21st century, American postmodern painters such as Michael Zansky and Bradley Rubenstein draw inspiration from "The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters" (1796–98) and Goya's Black Paintings. Zanksy's "Giants and Dwarf Series" (1990–2002) of large-scale paintings and wood carvings use imagery from Goya.[72][73]
- Spanish author Fernando Arrabal's novel The Burial of the Sardine was inspired by Goya's painting.[74]
- Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky's I Am Goya was inspired by Goya's anti-war paintings.[75]
- The video game Impasto was based on the works of Goya.[76]
See also
References
Footnotes
- ^ "Even if one takes into consideration the fact that Spanish portraiture is often realistic to the point of eccentricity, Goya's portrait still remains unique in its drastic description of human bankruptcy". Licht (1979), 68
- ^ Théophile Gautier described the figures as looking like "the corner baker and his wife after they won the lottery".[28]
- ^ A contemporary inventory compiled by Goya's friend, the painter Antonio de Brugada, records 15. See Lubow, 2003
- ^ As he had with the "Caprichos" and "The Disasters of War" series. Licht (1979), 159
Citations
- ^ Voorhies, James (October 2003). "Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment". www.metmuseum.org. HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY ESSAYS. Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 17 April 2021.
- ^ Harris-Frankfort, Enriqueta (12 April 2021). "Francisco Goya – The Napoleonic invasion and period after the restoration". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- ^ "The Frick Collection: Exhibitions". www.frick.org. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- ^ a b Hughes (2004), 32
- ^ "ZERAINGO OSPETSUAK : Francisco de Goya". Zerain.com. Archived from the original on 22 October 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2017.
- ^ a b Connell (2004), 6–7
- ^ Hughes (2004), 27
- ^ Hughes (2004), 33
- ^ "Cartas de Goya a Martín Zapater. Museo del Prado. Retrieved 13 December 2015
- ^ Connell (2004), 14
- ^ Hagen & Hagen, 317
- ^ Hughes (2004), 34
- ^ Hughes (2004), 37
- ^ Eitner (1997), 58
- ^ Baticle (1994), 74
- ^ Symmons (2004), 66
- ^ Goya F., Stepanek S. L., Ilchman F., Tomlinson J. A., Ackley C. S., Braun J. E., Mena M., Maurer G., Polidori E., Reed S. W., Weiss B., Wilson-Bareau J. & Museum of Fine Arts Boston. (2014). Goya: Order & Disorder (First). MFA Publications.
p. 14. ISBN 9780878468089.
- ^ Hagen & Hagen, 7
- ^ Hughes (2004), 95
- ^ Hagen; Hagen (1999), 7
- ^ "print study | British Museum". The British Museum. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
- ^ Hughes (2004), 96
- ^ Hughes (2004), 130
- ^ Hughes (2004), 83
- ^ Tomlinson (2003), 147
- ^ Hagen & Hagen, 29.
- ^ Tomlinson (1991), 59
- ^ Chocano, Carina. "Goya's Ghosts". Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2007. Retrieved 18 January 2008.
- ^ Licht (1979), 83
- ^ "The Nude Maja, the Prado". Retrieved 17 July 2010.
- ^ The unflinching eye.. The Guardian, October 2003.
- ISBN 84-87317-53-7
- ^ Hagen & Hagen, 70–73
- ^ The Sleep of Reason Archived 22 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine Linda Simon (www.worldandi.com). Retrieved 2 December 2006.
- ^ Hagen & Hagen, 35–36
- ^ Crow, Thomas (2007). "3: Tensions of the Enlightenment, Goya". In Stephen Eisenman (ed.). Nineteenth Century Art.: A Critical History (PDF) (3rd ed.). New York: Thames and Hudson. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
- ^ Licht (1979), 156
- ^ Schulz, Andrew. "The Expressive Body in Goya's Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent". The Art Bulletin, 80.4 1998.
- ^ It is not known why Goya became sick, the many theories range from polio or syphilis, to lead poisoning. Yet he survived until eighty-two years.
- ^ Hughes, Robert. "The unflinching eye". The Guardian, 4 October 2003. Retrieved 30 January 2010.
- ^ "Para occupar la imaginacion mortificada en la consideración de mis males" 4 January 1794. MS. Egerton 585, folio 74. Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. Reproduced in Gassier, Wilson, Appendix IV, p. 382.
- ISBN 978-1-56898-618-0.
- ISBN 978-0-88163-030-5.
- ^ Historical Clinicopathological Conference (2017) Archived 11 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine University of Maryland School of Medicine, Retrieved 27 January 2017.
- ISBN 978-0-306-43353-5.
- ^ Connell (2004), 78–79
- ISBN 978-0-87413-011-9.
- ISBN 978-1-78049-298-8.
- ^ Wilson-Bareau, 45
- ^ Jones, Jonathan. "Look what we did". The Guardian, 31 March 2003. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
- ^ Connell (2004), 175
- ISBN 1-84176-370-5
- ^ Connell, 175
- ^ The cause of Goya's illness is unknown; theories range from polio to syphilis to lead poisoning. See Connell, 78–79
- ^ Connell, 204; Hughes, 372
- ^ Larson, Kay. "Dark Knight". New York Magazine, Volume 22, No. 20, 15 May 1989. 111.
- ^ Stoichita; Coderch, 25–30
- ^ Licht (1979), 159
- ^ Lubow, Arthur. "The Secret of the Black Paintings". The New York Times, 27 July 2003. Retrieved 3 October 2010.
- ^ Hughes (2004), 402
- ^ Junquera, 13
- ISBN 9781476601151.
- ^ Gassier, 103
- ^ Buchholz, 79
- ^ Connell (2004), 28
- ^ Hughes (2004), 372
- ^ Junquera, 68
- ISBN 978-0-19-860476-1. Retrieved 15 April 2019.
- ^ Connell (2004), 235
- ISBN 978-02339-79953.
- ^ "Francisco Goya Paintings, Bio, Ideas". The Art Story. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-938922503.
- ^ Kuspit, Donald. "Donald Kuspit on Michael Zansky's Van Gogh Portraits". White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art.
- JSTOR 2929043. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
- ^ Anderson, Raymond H (1 June 2010). "Andrei Voznesensky, Russian Poet, Dies at 77". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
- ^ "Impasto on Steam".
Further reading
- Baticle, Jeannine. Goya: Painter of Terrible Splendor, "Abrams Discoveries" series. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994
- Buchholz, Elke Linda. Francisco de Goya. Cologne: Könemann, 1999. ISBN 3-8290-2930-6
- Ciofalo, John J. The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press, 2002
- Connell, Evan S. Francisco Goya: A Life. New York: Counterpoint, 2004. ISBN 978-1-58243-307-3
- ISBN 978-0-0643-2977-4
- Gassier, Pierre. Goya: A Biographical and Critical Study. New York: Skira, 1955
- Gassier, Piere and Juliet Wilson. The Life and Complete Work of Francisco Goya. New York 1971.
- Glendinning, Nigel. Goya and his Critics. New Haven 1977.
- Glendinning, Nigel. "The Strange Translation of Goya's Black Paintings". The Burlington Magazine, Volume 117, No. 868, 1975
- Hagen, Rose-Marie & Hagen, Rainer. Francisco Goya, 1746–1828. London: Taschen, 1999. ISBN 978-3-8228-1823-7
- Havard, Robert. "Goya's House Revisited: Why a Deaf Man Painted his Walls Black". Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume 82, Issue 5 July 2005
- Hennigfeld, Ursula (ed.). Goya im Dialog der Medien, Kulturen und Disziplinen. Freiburg: Rombach, 2013. ISBN 978-3-7930-9737-2
- Hilt, Douglas. "Goya: Turmoils of a Patriot" History Today (Aug 1973), Vol. 23 Issue 8, pp 536–545, online
- ISBN 978-0-394-58028-9
- Junquera, Juan José. The Black Paintings of Goya. London: Scala Publishers, 2008. ISBN 1-85759-273-5
- Kravchenko, Anastasiia. Mythological subjects in Francisco Goya's work. 2019
- Licht, Fred S. Goya in Perspective. New York 1973.
- Licht, Fred. Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art. Universe Books, 1979. ISBN 0-87663-294-0
- Litroy, Jo. Jusqu'à la mort. Paris: ISBN 978-2702440193
- Martín-Estudillo, Luis. Goya and the Mystery of Reading. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2023. ISBN 082-6505325
- Symmons, Sarah. Goya: A Life in Letters. Pimlico, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7126-0679-0
- Tomlinson, Janis. Francisco Goya y Lucientes 1746–1828. London: Phaidon, 1994. ISBN 978-0-7148-3844-1
- Tomlinson, Janis. "Burn It, Hide It, Flaunt It: Goya's Majas and the Censorial Mind". The Art Journal, Volume 50, No. 4, 1991
External links
- Francisco Goya's Cats
- www.FranciscoGoya.com
- Goya in Aragon Foundation: Online catalogue
- Goya, the Secret of the Shadows, a documentary film by David Mauas, Spain, 2011, 77'
- Goya: The Most Spanish of Artists, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Caprichos (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 October 2008. Retrieved 27 March 2005. (10.0 MB) (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine)
- Desastres de la guerra (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 November 2008. Retrieved 27 March 2005. (10.6 MB) (PDF in the Arno Schmidt Reference Library Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine)
- Etching series by Goya
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). 1911. p. 303. .
- "His Majesty's Giant Anteater – A New Goya is Discovered!"
- Bibliothèque numérique de l'INHA – Estampes de Francisco de Goya
- Goya in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF)
- Prints & People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains a significant amount of material on the prints of Goya
- Francisco Goya Prints in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library
- Goya hidden micro-signatures, a revolutionary discovery
- A Closer Look at Francisco Goya's 'Disasters of War' (Spanish title: 'Los Desastres de la Guerra')