Portal:Francisco Goya
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Introduction
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 and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era. Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He was also one of the great contemporary portraitists.
He was born to a modest family in 1746 in the village of Fuendetodos in Aragon. He studied painting from age 14 under José Luzán y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs. He married Josefa Bayeu in 1773; their life was characterised by an almost constant series of pregnancies and miscarriages, and only one child, a son, survived into adulthood. Goya became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and this early portion of his career is marked by portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and Rococo style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.
Selected general articles
Witches' Sabbath (Spanish: El Aquelarre) is a 1798 oil on canvas by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. Today it is held in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid.
It was purchased in 1798 along with five other paintings related to witchcraft by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. The acquisition of the witchcraft paintings is attributed to the duchess rather than her husband, but it is not known whether they were commissioned or bought after completion.
In the twentieth century the painting was purchased by the financier José Lázaro Galdiano and donated to the Spanish state on his death. Read more...
Men Reading or The Reading (Spanish: La Lectura) or Politicians are names given to a fresco painting likely completed between 1820–1823 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It is one of Goya's 14 Black Paintings (Pinturas negras) painted late in his life when, living alone in physical pain, spiritual torment and disillusionment with the political direction of Spain, he painted 14 bleak, agonised frescoes onto the walls of the Quinta del Sordo (House of the deaf man), the house he was living in alone outside Madrid.
As with the others in the series, it was transferred to canvas in 1873-74 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the work to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Prado. Read more...
Witches' Sabbath, 1821–23. Oil on plaster wall, transferred to canvas; 140.5 × 435.7 cm (56 × 172 in). Museo del Prado, Madrid
Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat (Spanish: Aquelarre or El gran cabrón) are names given to an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, completed sometime between 1821 and 1823. It explores themes of violence, intimidation, aging and death. Satan hulks, in the form of a goat, in moonlit silhouette over a coven of ugly and terrified witches. Goya was then around 75 years old, living alone and suffering from acute mental and physical distress.
It is one of the fourteen Black Paintings that Goya applied in oil on the plaster walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo. The paintings were completed in secret: he did not title any of the works or leave record of his intentions in creating them. Absent of fact, Witches' Sabbath is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age, a condemnation of superstition and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. As with the other works in the group, Witches' Sabbath reflects its painter's disillusionment and can be linked thematically to his earlier etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as well as the Disasters of War print series, another bold political statement published only posthumously. Read more...
The Colossus (also known as The Giant), is known in Spanish as El Coloso and also El Gigante (The Giant), El Pánico (The Panic) and La Tormenta (The Storm). It is a painting traditionally attributed to Francisco de Goya that shows a giant in the centre of the canvas walking towards the left hand side of the picture. Mountains obscure his legs up to his thighs and clouds surround his body; the giant appears to be adopting an aggressive posture as he is holding one of his fists up at shoulder height. A dark valley containing a crowd of people and herds of cattle fleeing in all directions occupies the lower third of the painting.
The painting became the property of Goya's son, Javier Goya, in 1812. The painting was later owned by Pedro Fernández Durán, who bequeathed his collection to Madrid's Museo del Prado, where it has been kept since 1931. Read more...
The Adoration of the Name of God (Spanish: Adoración del nombre de Dios) or The Glory (Spanish: La gloria) (1772) is a fresco painted by Francisco Goya on the ceiling of the cupola over the Small Choir of the Virgin in the Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar in Zaragoza. Read more...
The Bewitched Man (also known as The Devil's Lamp) is a painting completed c. 1798 by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. It is an oil painting on canvas and depicts a scene from a play by Antonio de Zamora called 'The man bewitched by force' (Spanish: El Hechizado Por Fuerza). The painting shows the protagonist, Don Claudio, who believes he is bewitched and that his life depends on keeping a lamp alight.
This is one of six paintings of witches and devils Goya painted for the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, who had an estate at Alameda de Osuna near Madrid. It is held by the National Gallery, London. Read more...
The Burial of the Sardine (Spanish: El entierro de la sardina) is an oil-on-panel painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, usually dated to the 1810s. The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event of a three-day carnival in Madrid ending on Ash Wednesday. Masked and disguised revellers are seen dancing their way to the banks of the Manzanares, where a ceremonial sardine will be buried. Goya does not illustrate the fish in the painting, nor the large doll made of straw, called a pelele, from which it hung; the centrepiece is the darkly grinning "King of the Carnival".
The painting has been dated between 1793 and 1819, but most accounts place it toward the end of this range on account of the painting's style and its place within the shifting themes of Goya's art as he aged. The Burial appears to fit within a progression beginning with the artist's bright, youthful works—in which he painted commissions of popular entertainments and colourful cartoon tapestries—and his much later, psychologically darker Black Paintings. The painting is certainly a tribute to the common people, depicting an exuberant crowd carousing on the first day of Lent while other Spanish Catholics worship at church. Yet the celebration takes on a sinister aspect due to the many masked and blank faces (see the detail in "Gallery") surrounding the gaily dancing women in white; the grey, distorted trees and encroaching dark colours; and the eye-catching black banner that parades an unsettling mascot. Such festivals as the "Burial of the Sardine" originated with themes of mortality: masks were worn to ward off the spirits of criminals and those who had died violently. The word "mortus" ("death") is barely visible on the banner though in a preparatory ink sketch by Goya (in the gallery below) it features prominently over an indistinct shape which may be a representation of the sardine itself. The painting forms a loose thematic set with other paintings of religious ceremony that Goya produced around the same time, among which are A Procession of Flagellants (Procesión de disciplinantes) and Inquisition Scene (Auto de fe de la Inquisición). Read more...
Portrait of Manuel Godoy is a large 1801 oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, now in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. It was commissioned by the Spanish Prime Minister Manuel Godoy to commemorate his victory in the brief War of the Oranges against Portugal.
The portrait is an incisive psychological characterisation. The subject's self belief is depicted via his unusual reclining posture, the surrounding horses, and the phallic baton situated between his legs. The painting metaphorically places Godoy sitting at the apex of the Spanish government. The artist captures Godoy's arrogance through his posture, and the inclusion of Portuguese flags. The choice of lighting gives intensity to the piece. Read more...
Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. According to the traditional interpretation, it depicts the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (in the title Romanized to Saturn), who, fearing that he would be overthrown by one of his children, ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and has since been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Read more...
La Leocadia (Spanish: Doña Leocadia) or The Seductress (Spanish: Una Manola) are names given to a mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, completed sometime between 1819–23, as one of his series of 14 Black Paintings. It shows a woman commonly identified as Goya's maid, companion and, most likely lover, Leocadia Weiss. She is dressed in a dark, almost funeral maja dress, and leans against what is either a mantelpiece or burial mound, as she looks outward at the viewer with a sorrowful expression. Leocadia is one of the final of the "Black Paintings", which he painted in his seventies at a time when he was consumed by political, physical and psychological turmoil, after he fled to the country from his position as court painter in Madrid.
According to the c. 1828–30 inventory of his friend Antonio Brugada, Leocadia was situated in the ground floor of his villa which Lawrence Gowing observes was thematically divided: a male side of Saturn Devouring His Son, A Pilgrimage to San Isidro; and a female side compromising Judith and Holofernes, Aquelarre and Leocadia. All the works in the series were transferred to canvas after Goya's death and are now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Read more...
Portrait of Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol by Francisco Goya, 1803–04.
Bartolomé Sureda y Miserol (1769–1850) was a Spanish manager of several royal artistic enterprises. He served as director of the Real Fábrica del Buen Retiro and later the successor Royal Factory of La Moncloa, both making porcelain in Madrid, as well as the Real Fabrica de Pano in Guadalajara, and the Real Fábrica de Cristales de La Granja, this making glass. Read more...
Two Old Ones Eating Soup (Spanish: Dos viejos comiendo sopa) or The Witchy Brew (Spanish: Dos Brujas) is one of the fourteen Black Paintings created by Francisco Goya between 1819–23. By this time, Goya was in his mid-70s and deeply disillusioned. He painted the works on the interior walls of the house known as the Quinta del Sordo ("House of the Deaf Man"). They were not intended for public display. Two Old Men Eating Soup likely occupied a position above the main door to the house, between La Leocadia and Two Old Men.
Like the other Black Paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1874–78 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado, Madrid. The owner, Baron Émile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Prado. Read more...
Majas on a Balcony (Spanish: Las majas en el balcón) is an oil painting by Francisco Goya, completed between 1808 and 1814, while Spain was engaged in the state of conflict after the invasion of Napoleon's French forces. The painting in the collection of Edmond de Rothschild in Switzerland is thought to be the original. Another version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is thought to be a copy. A further copy, attributed to Leonardo Alenza, is in the Pezzoli collection in Paris.
Goya considered his "maja" works, such as this painting and his contemporaneous Maja and Celestina on the Balcony [it; fr], a distraction from more serious works, such as his Disasters of War. Read more...
Christ Crucified (Cristo crucificado) is a 1780 painting of the Crucifixion of Jesus by Francisco de Goya. He presented it to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando as his entry work as an academician. It now forms part of the permanent collection of the Prado Museum. Read more...
The Nude Maja (Spanish: La Maja Desnuda [la ˈmaxa ðezˈnuða]) is a name given to a c. 1797–1800 oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as La maja vestida (The Clothed Maja); also in the Prado, it is usually hung next to La maja desnuda. The subject is identified as a maja based on her costume in La maja vestida.
The painting is renowned for the straightforward and unashamed gaze of the model towards the viewer. It has also been cited as among the earliest Western artwork to depict a nude woman's pubic hair without obvious negative connotations (such as in images of prostitutes). With this work Goya not only upset the ecclesiastical authorities, but also titillated the public and extended the artistic horizon of the day. It has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1901. Read more...
Maria del Rosario Weiss Zorrilla (2 October 1814 – 31 July 1843) was a Spanish painter and engraver best known for portraits. She was the goddaughter of Francisco de Goya and lived with him during his final years when her mother was his maid. Over seventy of her drawings, preserved at the Hispanic Society of America, were once attributed to Goya but, in 1956, the art historian José López-Rey [es] demonstrated conclusively that they were hers. Read more...
Man Mocked by Two Women or Women Laughing or (Spanish: Dos Mujeres y un hombre) or The Ministration (Spanish: Dos Mujeres Y Un Hombre) are names given to a painting likely completed between 1820–1823 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya.
It is one of Goya's 14 Black Paintings, a series created in despair near the end of his life, and is oppressively dark in both mood and colour. It shows two women with maniacal smiles seemingly laughing at a simple-minded man masturbating at the right hand of the picture. Despite their jeers, the woman to the left is also likely masturbating, which — in the absence of any written or oral comment from Goya on any work on the series — art critics and historians believe lends to the image's futile and sterile intent. Read more...
The Third of May 1808 (also known as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's suggestion.
The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. Diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, The Third of May 1808 is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention". Read more...
The Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate is an 1810-1811 painting of the actress Antonia Zárate by Francisco Goya or his studio. It is now in the Hermitage Museum and if it is an autograph work, it is the only painting by Goya in a Russian collection.
It seems to have been commissioned by the subject's son Antonio Gil y Zárate in 1811 after her death and probably forms a reworking of Goya's earlier larger 1805 portrait of her. It remained in Spain until 1900, when it was sold in New York City. It passed through various dealers and owners before being acquired by the Knoedler Gallery for $60,000 from an heir of Marshall Field, a department-store magnate in Chicago. That gallery was owned by Armand Hammer, who then used a Liechtenstein front to sell it to his own Armand Hammer Foundation for $160,000. In 1972 Hammer donated it to the Hermitage, claiming it was worth $1,000,000. Read more...
Pilgrimage to the Fountain of San Isidro or The Holy Office (Spanish: Peregrinación a la fuente de San Isidro or El Santo Official) are names given to an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828), probably completed between 1821 and 1823. The mural is one of the fourteen Black Paintings that Goya applied in oil on the plaster walls of his house. Between 1874 and 1878 the paintings were transferred to canvas supports under the direction of the art restorer of the Museo del Prado, Salvador Martinez Cubells.
Pilgrimage depicts a procession headed by a group of eight more discernible people. One man wears clothing from the 17th century and carries a glass; another is a monk or a nun. The left half of the painting with its bright sky is among the lighter passages of the Black Paintings, which are dominated by browns, greys, and blacks. Another Black Painting, A Pilgrimage to San Isidro, seems of a piece with Pilgrimage except for its darker tone. Both may depict processions to the shrine of San Isidro—a thought reflected in their titles (none given by Goya)—which was close to his home, Quinta del Sordo. Read more...
Charles IV in his Hunting Clothes is an oil on canvas painting of 1799 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, the second of his two portraits of King Charles IV of Spain. Goya had earlier been court painter to Charles III, who was widely viewed as the more astute political operator of the pair. While not lacking intelligence, Carlos IV is broadly seen as an idler compared to his father; ultimately he was outmaneuvered by Napoleon at a time when he was more interested in sport and hunting than affairs of state.
While Goya devotes a great deal of attention to his depiction of the king's sash and cloth, he emphasises his weakness in his rendering of a near-portly belly and indecisive stare. The art critic Robert Hughes describes a "big nosed face, framed in the tricorned hat like the head of an affable turtle poking from its shell". During his career, Goya depicted both father and son in hunting dress. The inspiration for the older man's outfit is probably taken from Velázquez's portrait of Philip IV, which the artist would have opportunity to see as then court painter. Goya pays tribute to Titian's Portrait of Charles V with a dog by depicting a dog loyally sniffing at the royal crotch. Read more...
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Spanish: El sueño de la razón produce monstruos) is an etching by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. Created between 1797 and 1799, it is the 43rd of 80 etchings making up the suite of satires Los Caprichos. Read more...
Asmodea or Fantastic Vision (Spanish: Visión fantástica) are names given to a fresco painting likely completed between 1820–1823 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It shows two flying figures hovering over a landscape dominated by a large tabled mountain. Asmodea is one of Goya's 14 Black Paintings—his last major series—which, in mental and physical despair, he painted at the end of his life directly onto the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo, outside Madrid.
No written or oral record survives as to the series' intended meaning, and it is probable that they were never intended to be seen by those outside his then small immediate circle. Goya did not name any of the works in the series; the title of Asmodea was later given by his friend, the Spanish painter Antonio Brugada. The title is likely a feminine naming of the demon king Asmodeus from the Book of Tobias. Asmodeus also appears in the myth of the Greek Titan Prometheus, in which the goddess Minerva carries him to the Caucasus mountains. Read more...
Yard with Lunatics (Spanish: Corral de locos) is a small oil-on-tinplate painting completed by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya between 1793 and 1794. Goya said that the painting was informed by scenes of institutions he had witnessed as a youth in Zaragoza. Yard with Lunatics was painted around the time when Goya’s deafness and fear of mental illness were developing and he was increasingly complaining of his health. A contemporary diagnosis read, "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."
Though Goya had to that point been preoccupied with commissioned portraits of royalty and noblemen, this work is one of a dozen small-scale, dark images he produced independently. Uncommissioned, 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. He was undergoing a nervous breakdown and entering prolonged physical illness, and admitted that the series was created to reflect his own self-doubt, anxiety and fear that he himself was going mad. Goya wrote that the works served "to occupy my imagination, tormented as it is by contemplation of my sufferings." The series, he said, consisted of pictures which "normally find no place in commissioned works." Read more...
The Rape of Europa ("El rapto de Europa") is a 1772 painting by Francisco Goya[verification needed] (1746–1828) depicting Europa's abduction by the Greek god Zeus in the form of a bull. The classical theme from Greek mythology has also been painted by numerous Old Masters. Read more...
The Grape Harvest or Autumn (Spanish: La vendimia o El Otoño) is a 1786 oil on canvas painting by Francisco Goya which depicts a man in autumn-colored clothes with his wife and son. A peasant is presenting them with a sample of the year’s grape harvest. The piece has been held by the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1870. Read more...
A Pilgrimage to San Isidro (Spanish: La romería de San Isidro) is one of the Black Paintings painted by Francisco de Goya between 1819–23 on the interior walls of the house known as "The House of the Deaf Man" (Quinta del Sordo) that he purchased in 1819. It probably occupied a wall on the first floor of the house, opposite The Great He-Goat.
Like the other Black Paintings, it was transferred to canvas in 1873–74 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Museo del Prado. Read more...
Two Old Men, also known as Two Monks or An Old Man and a Monk (Spanish: Dos viejos, Dos frailes, or Un viejo y un fraile), are names given to one of the 14 Black Paintings painted by Francisco Goya between 1819-23. Goya was then in his mid-70s and in mental and physical distress. He painted the works on the interior walls of the house known as "The House of the Deaf Man" (Quinta del Sordo) that he purchased in 1819.
In the picture, two elderly figures dressed in friar's habits stand before a black background. The man in front has a long grey beard, is tall and rests on a cane. He may represent Chronos, the god of time. Beside him is a highly-caricatured figure whose face is animal-like. This figure seems to be shouting into the ear of his companion, which might be an allusion to Goya's deafness. Read more...
The Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate is a c.1805 portrait of the actress Antonia Zárate by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It was probably produced by Goya in his studio, where an 1812 inventory mentions there were eight yellow damask chairs and an associated divan. She wears a black silk dress in the Empire style, then fashionable in Spain, with her arms covered by fingerless white gloves, her hands holding a closed fan and a mantilla on her head and shoulders. The painting may also have been the source for the 1810-11 portrait of her by Goya or his studio.
The work remained in the Zárate family until at least 1900, when it was put on show in Madrid and stated to be owned by Doña Adelaida Gil y Zárate. It was bought in London by Sir Otto Beit, who exhibited it at Russborough House and bequeathed it to his son Sir Alfred Beit. It was stolen from Russborough House in 1974 and 1986. A year after the second robbery it was nominally donated by Beit to the National Gallery of Ireland, though it was only recovered from the thieves in 1993. Read more...
The Parasol (also known as El Quitasol) is one of a cartoon series of oil on linen paintings made by the painter Francisco Goya. This series of paintings was specifically made in order to be transformed into tapestries that would be hung on the walls of the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Madrid, Spain. The tapestries showed serene events in everyday life, which made them a nice addition to the dining room of Prince and Princess of Asturias—the future King Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma. The queen called on Goya because she wanted to decorate the dining room with cheerful scenes; The Parasol and the other tapestry paintings were Goya's response to this request. The painting is currently located in the Museo del Prado in Madrid as is another in the series, Blind man's bluff. Read more...
Did you know...
- ... that a reviewer of a solo exhibition by Lena Gurr said that the American artist "painted with the gusto of a Goya"?
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Selected images
The Garroted Man, before 1780. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Portrait of Manuel Godoy, 1801. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux, 1825–27, is the third and final Goya portrait which may depict Leocadia Weiss.
The Second of May 1808, 1814
Witches' Sabbath or Aquelarre is one of 14 from the Black Paintings series.
Portrait of Goya by Vicente López Portaña, c. 1826. Museo del Prado, Madrid
Yard with Lunatics, c. 1794
The Third of May 1808, 1814. Oil on canvas, 266 cm × 345 cm (105 in × 136 in). Museo del Prado, Madrid
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, c. 1797, 21.5 cm × 15 cm (8 1⁄2 in × 5 7⁄8 in)
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