18th-19th Century Spanish

Born on 30 March 1746 in Fuendetodos, to a family belonging to Aragon’s lesser nobility. He began his education with the Piarists in Zaragoza. There he met the enlightened trader Martín Zapater, with whom he would maintain a long-standing friendship and whose correspondence throughout his life became one of the main sources of information on the painter.

At the age of fourteen, Goya began his training at the studio of José Luzán (1710-1785), where he learned to paint by copying from the old Italian Renaissance and Baroque masters. That initial training did not help him to enter the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, whose entry exams he failed time and again. That notwithstanding, the young Goya would remain three years in the Spanish capital, where he became acquainted with the works of Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), who were court painters in those days.

In 1770 he embarked on a journey throughout Italy. During his stay in Rome—apart from contacting the Spanish community there—he met Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778), whose prints left a lasting impression on him. Although neither his experience in Italy nor the prevailing spirit of Baroque had an immediate effect on his work, they would have an instrumental effect in shaping his mature period.

In the summer of 1771 the artist returned to Zaragoza. There, the painting of a fresco at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar cemented his reputation as one of the city’s most popular artists. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, whose brothers facilitated contact with Mengs, who commissioned him with various cartoons for the royal palaces. As a result Goya moved to Madrid two years later.

Eventually, in 1780 he succeeded in entering the Royal Academy, a fact that consolidated his prestige, culminating in his appointment as King’s Painter in 1786. His celebrity led to an intense activity as a portraitist of Madrid’s nobility, establishing contact with liberal circles surrounding King Charles III (1716-1788), frequented by a number of enlightened aristocrats such as Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos or the Duke and Duchess of Osuna.

In 1789 he was appointed painter to the new monarchs Charles IV (1748-1819) and Maria Luisa de Parma (1751-1819), and continued his work as an acclaimed portraitist of high society. Three years later Goya fell seriously ill as a consequence of inhaling lead carbonate. The illness left him deaf, a condition that heightened his tendency towards introversion and pessimism, and had a profound effect on his practice, which began to adopt a more expressive and personal character.

After that serious crisis he was able to resume his career, and in 1795 he was appointed director of painting at the Royal Academy. That same year he met María Teresa Cayetana de Silva, Duchess of Alba, whose celebrated portrait he painted and with whom he engaged in an intimate relationship. At that time, he undertook a large number of drawings marked by a caricature-like and ironic style, which led to the series Los Caprichos, published in 1799. In that same year Goya was appointed First Court Painter.

The early years of the nineteenth century found him deeply immersed in his work. Besides court portraits, like the memorable The Family of Carlos IV, he was commissioned paintings by Godoy, including the iconic The Clothed Maja and very likely The Nude Maja.

In 1808, on the outbreak of the Peninsular War, Goya put his work at the service of the homeland, an experience he would immortalize in the heroic deeds of 2 and 3 May 1808. During the war the artist began a suite of prints titled The Disasters of War, depicting in them the key role played by the people and showing his support for the liberal cause.

Once the war was over and Ferdinand VII (1784-1833) was restored to the throne in 1814, Goya remained as distant from the court as he could and expressed his rejection of the monarch’s absolutist regime. However, in his capacity of King’s Painter, he continued painting royal portraits and also of members of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie of the time.

In 1819 he left the court for good and purchased a house, the famous Quinta del Sordo, on the outskirts of Madrid. A new illness triggered another personal crisis and intensified his tempestuous character, leading him to represent on the walls of his home various allegorical scenes of exaggerated or grotesque realism, often viewed as the expressive culmination of his genius. These are what are now known as his Black Paintings.

In 1824 Goya requested permission, as court painter, to travel to France to take the waters there. Two years later, while living in France, he asked for retirement. He settled in Bordeaux, where he passed away in the night from 15 to 16 April 1828.