   #copyright

Francisco Goya

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Artists

   Goya's self-portrait
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   Goya's self-portrait

   Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes ( March 30, 1746 – April 16, 1828)
   was a Spanish painter and printmaker.

   Goya was a portraitist and court painter to the Spanish Crown, a
   chronicler of history, and, in his unofficial work, a revolutionary and
   a visionary. He has been regarded both as the last of the old masters
   and as the first of the moderns. The subversive and subjective element
   in his art, as well as his bold handling of paint, provided a model for
   the work of later generations of artists, notably Manet and Picasso.

   Many of Goya's works are on display at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Biography

   Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Spain in the province of Aragon in 1746
   to Joseph Goya and Gracia Lucientes. He spent his childhood in
   Fuendetodos, where his family lived in a house bearing the family crest
   of his mother, and which was surrounded by the dry lands. His father
   earned his living as a guilder. About 1749, the family bought a house
   in the city of Zaragosa and some years later moved into it.
   Francisco Goya. The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders
   of Madrid. 1814. Oil on canvas. 345 x 266 cm. Madrid: Museo del Prado.
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   Francisco Goya. The Third of May 1808: The Execution of the Defenders
   of Madrid. 1814. Oil on canvas. 345 x 266 cm. Madrid: Museo del Prado.
   Francisco Goya. The Family of Charles IV (1800)
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   Francisco Goya. The Family of Charles IV (1800)

   Goya attended school at Escuelas Pias, where he formed a close
   friendship with Martin Zapater, and their correspondence over the years
   became valuable material for biographies of Goya. At age 14, he entered
   apprenticeship with the painter Jose Lujan.

   He later moved to Madrid where he studied with Anton Raphael Mengs, a
   painter who was popular with Spanish royalty. He clashed with his
   master, and his examinations were unsatisfactory.

   Goya submitted entries for the Spanish Royal Academy in 1763 and 1766,
   but was denied entrance. He then journeyed to Rome, where in 1771 he
   won second prize in a painting competition organized by the City of
   Parma.

   He returned to Saragossa in 1771 and painted a part of the cupola of
   the Basilica of the Pillar, frescoes of the oratory of the cloisters of
   Aula Dei, and the frescoes of the Sobradiel Palace. He studied with
   Francisco Bayeu y Subías and his painting began to show signs of the
   delicate tonalities for which he became known.

   Goya and Bayeu's sister, Josefa, married in 1774. His marriage to
   Josefa (he called her Pepa) helped him to procure work with the Royal
   Tapestry Workshop, where over the course of five years he designed some
   42 patterns. He also gained access to the royal court, painted a canvas
   for the altar of the Church of San Francisco El Grande, and was
   appointed a member of the Academy of San Fernando.

   In 1783, the Count of Floridablanca, a favourite of King Carlos III,
   commissioned him to paint his portrait. He also became friends with
   Crown Prince Don Luis, and lived in his house. His circle of patrons
   grew to include the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whom he painted, the
   King and other notable people of the kingdom.

   After the death of Carlos III in 1788 and revolution in France in 1789,
   during the reign of Carlos IV, Goya reached his peak of popularity with
   royalty.

   After contracting a high fever in 1792 Goya was left deaf, and he
   became withdrawn and introspective. During the five years he spent
   recuperating, he read a great deal about the French Revolution and its
   philosophy. The bitter series of aquatinted etchings that resulted were
   published in 1799 under the title Los Caprichos. The dark visions
   depicted in these prints are partly explained by his caption, "The
   sleep of reason produces monsters" (alternate translation: "The dreams
   of reason produce monsters"). Yet these are not solely bleak in nature
   and demonstrate the artist's sharp satirical wit, particularly evident
   in etchings such as Hunting for Teeth. Additionally, one can discern a
   thread of the macabre running through Goya's work, even in his earlier
   tapestry cartoons.
   Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)
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   Saturn Devouring His Son (1819)

   In 1799 he was appointed the Spanish royal painter with a salary of
   50,000 reales and 500 ducats for a coach. He worked on the cupola of
   the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida; he painted the King and the
   Queen, royal family pictures, portraits of the Prince of the Peace and
   many other nobles.

   As French forces invaded Spain during the Peninsular War (1808–1814),
   the new Spanish court received him as had its predecessors.

   When Pepa died in 1812, Goya was painting The Charge of the Mamelukes
   and The Third of May 1808, and preparing the series of prints known as
   The Disasters of War.

   King Ferdinand VII came back to Spain but relations with Goya were not
   cordial. In 1814 Goya lived with his cousin Rosario Weiss, and her
   daughter, Dona Leocadia, whom he loved madly. He continued to work
   incessantly on portraits, pictures of Santa Justa and Santa Rufina,
   lithographs, pictures of tauromachy, and more.

   With the idea of isolating himself, he bought a house near Manzanares,
   which was known as the Quinta del Sordo (roughly, "House of the Deaf
   Man"). There he made the Black Paintings.

   Unsettled and discontented, he left Spain in May 1824 for Bordeaux and
   Paris. He settled in Bordeaux. He returned to Spain in 1826 after
   another period of ill health. Despite a warm welcome, he returned to
   Bordeaux where he died in 1828 aged 82.

Works

   Goya painted the Spanish royal family, including Charles IV of Spain
   and Ferdinand VII. His themes range from merry festivals for tapestry,
   draft cartoons, to scenes of war and corpses. This evolution reflects
   the darkening of his temper. Modern physicians suspect that the lead in
   his pigments poisoned him and caused his deafness since 1792. Near the
   end of his life, he became reclusive and produced frightening and
   obscure paintings of insanity, madness, and fantasy. The style of these
   Black Paintings prefigure the expressionist movement. He often painted
   himself into the foreground.

   Two of Goya's best known paintings are The Nude Maja (La Maja desnuda)
   and The Clothed Maja (La Maja vestida). They depict the same woman in
   the same pose, naked and clothed respectively. He painted La Maja
   Vestida after outrage in Spanish society over the previous Desnuda. He
   refused to paint clothes on her, and instead created a new painting.
   (See also: Majo.)

   In a period of convalescence during 1793–94, he completed a set of
   eleven small pictures painted on tin, called the pictures of “Fantasy
   and Invention” that mark a change in his art. These paintings no longer
   represent the world of popular carnival, but rather a dark, dramatic
   realm of fantasy and nightmare. "Courtyard with Lunatics" is a
   horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social
   alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of
   mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth. In this
   painting, the ground, sealed by masonry blocks and iron gate, is
   occupied by patients and a single warden. The patients are variously
   staring, sitting, posturing, wrestling, grimacing or disciplining
   themselves. The top of the picture vanishes with sunlight, emphasizing
   the nightmarish scene below.

   This picture can be read as an indictment of the widespread punitive
   treatment of the insane, who were confined with criminals, put in iron
   manacles, and subjected to physical punishment. And this intention is
   to be taken into consideration since one of the essential goals of the
   enlightenment was to reform the prisons and asylums, a subject common
   in the writings of Voltaire and others.

   This condemnation of brutality towards prisoners (whether they were
   criminals or insane) was the subject of many of Goya’s later paintings.

   As he completed this painting, Goya was himself undergoing a physical
   and mental breakdown. It was a few weeks after the French declaration
   of war on Spain, and Goya’s illness was developing. A contemporary
   reported, “the noises in his heads and deafness aren’t improving, yet
   his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance.”
   His symptoms may indicate a prolonged viral encephalitis or possibly a
   series of miniature strokes resulting from high blood pressure and
   affecting hearing and balance centers in the brain.
   The Collossus
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   The Collossus

   In 1799 he created a series of 80 prints 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."

   In The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid,
   Goya attempted to "perpetuate by the means of his brush the most
   notable and heroic actions of our glorious insurrection against the
   Tyrant of Europe" The painting does not show an incident that Goya
   witnessed; rather it was meant as more abstract commentary.

   In later life Goya bought a house Quinta del Sordo ("Deaf Man's House")
   and painted many unusual paintings on canvas and on the walls,
   including references to witchcraft and war. One of these is the famous
   work Saturn Devouring His Sons (known informally in some circles as
   Devoration or Saturn Eats His Child), which displays a Greco-Roman
   mythological scene of the god Saturn consuming a child, a reference to
   Spain's ongoing civil conflicts. This painting is one of 14 in a series
   called the Black Paintings. After his death the wall paintings were
   transferred to canvas and remain some of the best examples of the later
   period of Goya's life when, deafened and driven half-mad by what was
   probably an encephalitis of some kind, decided to free himself from
   painterly strictures of the time and paint whatever nightmarish visions
   came to him. Many of these works are in the Prado museum in Madrid.

   In the 1810s, Goya created a set of aquatint prints titled Los Desatres
   de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) which depict scenes from the
   Peninsular War. The prints were published in 1863, 35 years after his
   death.

   Goya had many friends within the Spanish nobility, and received many
   orders from them. Some of the most famous paintings were done for Pedro
   de Álcantara Téllez-Girón, 9th Duke of Osuna and his wife María Josefa
   de la Soledad, 9th Duchess of Osuna, his famous patron María del Pilar
   Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, 13th Duchess of Alba who
   is almost universally known as the "Duchess of Alba", and her husband
   José Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga, 13th Duke of Alba, and another
   painting for María Ana de Pontejos y Sandoval, Marchioness of Pontejos.

Cinema and opera

   Remembrance plaque for Goya in Bordeaux
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   Remembrance plaque for Goya in Bordeaux

   Several films portray Goya's life:
     * Goya (1948) at the Internet Movie Database
     * Goya, historia de una soledad (1971) at the Internet Movie Database
     * Goya in Bordeaux (1999) at the Internet Movie Database
     * Volavérunt (1999) at the Internet Movie Database
     * Goya's Ghosts (2006) at the Internet Movie Database

   Gian Carlo Menotti wrote a biographical opera about him titled Goya
   (1986), commissioned by Plácido Domingo, who originated the role; this
   production has been presented on television. He also inspired Michael
   Nyman's opera Facing Goya (2000), in which he appears in the present to
   protest the use of his skull in racist science, for which reason the
   historical Goya had his skull hidden and not buried with the rest of
   his body.

   In 1988 American musical theatre composer Maury Yeston released a
   studio cast album of his own musical, Goya: A Life In Song. Plácido
   Domingo again starred as Goya, with Jennifer Rush, Gloria Estefan,
   Joseph Cerisano, Dionne Warwick, Richie Havens, and Seiko Matsuda
   singing supporting roles. Music and lyrics were by Yeston, and the
   recording was released by CBS/Sony (483294-2). The score featured one
   break-out song, “Till I Loved You,” sung by Placido Domingo and Gloria
   Estefan. It was subsequently a Top 40 hit by Barbra Streisand. In spite
   of that commercial success, the piece has not recieved a major staging.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Goya"
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