Francisco Goya
Who was Francisco Goya?
Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Francisco Goya (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, a small village in Aragon, Spain, to a middle-class family. He began learning painting at the age of 14 with José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza. He got his basic art education at the School of St. Thomas Aquinas of the Piarist Schools of Zaragoza and later at the Real Academia de Nobles y Bellas Artes de San Luis. Goya then moved to Madrid to study with the well-known court painter Anton Raphael Mengs and attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. In 1773, he married Josefa Bayeu, the sister of painter Francisco Bayeu, which helped boost his early career.
Goya steadily advanced in the Spanish art scene, becoming a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786. Early on, his career included portraits of aristocrats and royalty and Rococo-style cartoons for decorating royal palaces. By 1795, he was appointed Director of the Royal Academy, and in 1799, he reached the highest position for a Spanish court painter, Primer Pintor de Cámara. Around this time, he completed La maja desnuda, an unusually bold nude inspired by Diego Velázquez, and shortly after, he painted the large group portrait Charles IV of Spain and His Family.
In 1793, a severe and never fully understood illness left Goya permanently deaf. This marked a turning point in his artistic style. His work became darker, more introspective, and more critical of human folly and political violence. This change is notably seen in the Caprichos, a series of satirical aquatint etchings published in 1799, criticizing the superstitions, corruption, and moral failures he saw in Spanish society. His printmaking from this period onward made him a master in the field, with imagery that carried deep psychological and political messages.
The Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1807 and the Peninsular War had a strong impact on Goya's work. He stayed in Madrid during the French occupation and witnessed the violence against Spanish civilians. These experiences led to some of his most powerful pieces, including The Third of May 1808, painted in 1814, which shows the execution of Spanish resistance fighters by French soldiers and is one of the most striking anti-war images in Western art. He also created The Disasters of War, a series of prints showing the harsh realities of the conflict honestly.
In his final years, Goya chose to live in Bordeaux, France, where he continued working until his death on April 16, 1828. In this last phase, he experimented with lithography, showing a lasting interest in new printmaking methods even in his old age. His work includes hundreds of paintings, drawings, and prints that together show a wide range of themes and deep psychological insight. He is often seen as both the last of the Old Masters and the first artist to explore the emotional and critical ideas of modern art.
Before Fame
Francisco Goya was born to a humble family in Fuendetodos, Aragon. When his family moved to Zaragoza, he began formal artistic training with José Luzán y Martínez around 1760. He tried twice to get into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, but was unsuccessful both times. Instead, he went to Rome to study on his own. Although he faced setbacks due to competition and rejection from institutions, he worked his way up by taking on religious commissions and forming connections through his marriage into the Bayeu family of painters.
Spain, at the time of Goya's birth, was still heavily influenced by the Bourbon monarchy and the Catholic Church, with Enlightenment ideas slowly making their way from France and other parts of Europe. Goya's rise to fame was driven more by networking, honing his skills, and appealing to the tastes of aristocratic and royal patrons. He managed to develop a personal and critical artistic style as well. His hard work and growing reputation for insightful portraits eventually led to his appointment as a court painter and later advancement to Primer Pintor de Cámara.
Key Achievements
- Appointed Primer Pintor de Cámara to the Spanish Crown in 1799, the highest court painter rank in Spain
- Created The Third of May 1808, widely considered one of the most influential anti-war paintings in the history of Western art
- Published the Caprichos in 1799, a groundbreaking series of 80 satirical aquatint etchings that expanded the expressive possibilities of printmaking
- Completed the frescoes for the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid, a major achievement in monumental religious painting
- Produced The Disasters of War, a series of 82 prints documenting the Peninsular War that anticipated documentary journalism and modern war photography
Did You Know?
- 01.Goya's La maja desnuda was one of the first Western paintings to depict pubic hair on a female nude, which led to his being summoned before the Spanish Inquisition around 1815 to explain the painting's origins.
- 02.During his final years in Bordeaux, Goya produced a series of miniature paintings on ivory, experimenting with a technique that involved dropping ink onto the surface and manipulating the blots into figures.
- 03.The so-called Black Paintings, including Saturn Devouring His Son, were not originally intended for public exhibition; Goya painted them directly onto the interior walls of his house outside Madrid, known as the Quinta del Sordo, or House of the Deaf Man.
- 04.Goya survived into his eighties despite the severe illness of 1793 that left him deaf, and he was still producing original lithographs in Bordeaux in the final years of his life, in his late seventies and early eighties.
- 05.His large religious fresco cycle for the dome of the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid, completed in 1798, is unique in depicting saints surrounded by ordinary people of his own era rather than heavenly figures.