GOYA :: essays research papers

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, a village in northern Spain. The family later moved to Saragossa, where Goyas father worked as a gilder. At fourteen years old, Goya was apprenticed to Jose Luzan, a local anaesthetic painter. Later he went to Italy to continue his study of art. On returning to Saragossa in 1771, he painted frescoes for the local cathedral. These working, done in the decorative rococo tradition, realised Goyas artisanic reputation. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, sister of Saragossa artist Francisco Bayeu. The couple had many children, but only one--a son, Xavier--survived to adulthood. From 1775 to 1792 Goya painted cartoons (designs) for the royal tapis factory in Madrid. This was the most important period in his aesthetical development. As a tapestry designer, Goya did his first genre paintings, or scenes from common life. The experience helped him become a keen observer of human behavior. He was also influenced by neoclassicism, which was gaining favor over the rococo dash. Finally, his study of the works of Velazquez in the royal collection resulted in a looser, more oral painting technique. At the same time, Goya achieved his first popular success. He became established as a portrait painter to the Spanish aristocracy. He was choose to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, named painter to the king in 1786, and make a court painter in 1789. A serious unwellness in 1792 left Goya permanently deaf. Isolated from others by his deafness, he became progressively occupied with the fantasies and inventions of his imagination and with critical and satirical observations of mankind. He evolved a bold, stop new style close to caricature. In 1799 he published the Caprichos, a series of etchings satirizing human folly and weakness. His portraits became penetrating characterizations, revealing their subjects as Goya axiom them. In his religious frescoes he employed a broad, free style and an earthy realism unprecedented in religious art. Goya served as director of painting at the Royal Academy from 1795 to 1797 and was appointed first Spanish court painter in 1799. During the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish fight of independence from 1808 to 1814, Goya served as court painter to the French. He expressed his shame of armed conflict in The Disasters of War, a series of starkly vivid etchings on the atrocities of war. They were not published until 1863, long after Goyas death.