Pictures of Francisco de Goya | Goya. Painter in the rococo style.

The work of Goya is remarkable not only because it appears as a living document of the events and ideas of his time, but also because it can detect concerns that have survived until today. In addition to extraordinary painter, he was also a creator able to glimpse new pathways that were then explored thoroughly by later artists.

Boldly independent and highly original, Goya was a painter in the rococo style when rococo fashion had become extinct in Europe. He was a painter illustrated, but refractory to neoclassicism. He was a painter of vigorous personality, but in a time in which the Spanish painting lacked personality. It was a decorativista painter in its origins, academic when it was encouraged its courtesans, and expressionist ambitions with a century in advance, in works like two old eating. It has been also considered by some critics as a forerunner of Impressionism, by works such as the milkmaid of Bordeaux (1828, Museo del Prado), or symbolism, the Colossus or panic, but, in any case, is decidedly unclassifiable by the unusual set of his prints (whims, bullfighting, disasters, nonsense) and the strange drawings that proliferate in their albums. The following annotated exhibition allows you to follow the evolution, in chronological order, of the rich and varied career.

The pestle and the masked men

1777
Canvas. 2.75 x 1.90
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The production of Goya is enormously rich and various. The Prado, which has an amazing amount of works, shows almost entirely the slow and personal evolution of its sensitivity. The main milestones of the artistic life of Goya are here represented, from painting his early Madrid - cartons for tapestries that they give his appearance live, sensitive and popular, sometimes tinged with irony and humor, even with some rococo grace in your treatment - until the grim and dramatic "black paintings" in his old age, that seem to announce so many directions of contemporary painting through official portraits, pictures of history and some of its best academic efforts, as well as many private portraits and squares less than character very various, collected through various channels and unrelated to their official work.

His work as a supplier of cartons for the Royal tapestry factory, which was his first Madrid occupation, stored in the Prado almost in its entirety. It can be seen how lengthwise of the nearly twenty years that lasted this activity, from 1775 to 1792, Goya was taking advantage of this almost artisan obligation to test, harmonize, vary compositions, observe and interpret the reality; i.e. as pure painting school.

The first works, even clumsy, mediocre, without any personal success that distinguish them from the of his brothers-in-law the Bayeu, soon passes to secure expertise that warns the cartons that delivers in 1777. That date is the pestle and the masked men, funny decorative boot, already painted with considerable wealth of warm tones and a security of brush.

The blind man

1788 1789
Canvas. 2.69 x 3.50
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Cartoonist tardorrococo amused Goya, in the beginning, humanity as a puppet show. In its cheerful cartons for tapestries in the paintings of the 1970s and 1980s, their figures maintain a fragile balance, movements described unfinished actions and represented faces are masks of porcelain. Note, if not, the circle smiling and playfulness of the blind man (1788-1789), preserved in the Museo del Prado.

The crockery vendor

1779
Canvas. 2.59 x 2.20
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Painted in 1779, the crockery vendor or the China Post, as he is designated in the documents, is already a masterpiece painted with a richness and refinement which exceed, by far the simple decorative intention that was intended. Such cartons so subtle and refined his technique, so rich of terms and nuances, are those caused in some cases protests of the weavers who warned almost, difficulty, inability to pass so many subtleties to the tissue. From the previous year, 1778, Goya has had access to the Royal collections, and the study and meditation on the old masters, especially Velázquez, give its fruit in cartons of these years, with its grey remoteness, attesting to the gradual cooling of his palette.

Portrait of María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga

1783
Canvas. 0.80 x 0.60
Gallery of the Uffizi, Florence.

María Teresa de Vallabriga married the infante Luis Antonio de Borbón, son of Felipe V and brother of Carlos III. This canvas is perhaps the sketch for a larger work. Dressed in blue Amazon envarada figure, wooden horse, the hilly landscape and the parched land in the foreground have the freshness and immediacy of the sketchy and quickly prepared. The work can be dated around 1783.

The wounded bricklayer [detail]

1786 1787
Canvas. 2.68 x 1.10
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

1786 or 1787, with the wounded bricklayer, Goya makes one of the best known works from this period. Very narrow and high format, condition imposed for decorative reasons, representing two Masons who moved to a fellow probably hurt after falling from a scaffold.

The picture has also a considerable thematic interest, which becomes the painter (as he has pointed out on several occasions) in a forerunner of the "social painting". From this period dates a Royal Decree of Carlos III to anticipate accidents of construction work and enable aid to the injured. The decree he demanded damages to the master of works in case of accident, established standards for prudent lifting scaffolding, threatened with prison and heavy fines in the event of negligence and pointed out economic aid to survivors and their families.

Accordingly, Goya cooperates with this painting on a new policy for development and dignity of labour, thus Tuning with feeling more progressive for his time. To paint this pathetic tapestry echoed a common and serious social problem.

It is curious, however, to observe how, to repeat the composition years later for the Cabinet of the Duchess of Osuna, it changed the drama by irony, to replace the injured by a drunken face bloated and mechanical laughing. Undoubtedly, the theme of the initial version was not suitable for the boudoir of the Duchess.

The nevada

1786 1787
Canvas. 2.75 x 2.93
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Painted in 1786, happy year for the painter, as he received the appointment of painter of the King and affirms his prestige among intellectuals and businessmen Madrid, this beautiful tapestry is part of a series of ideal of the four seasons, in which the floreras embodies spring, era, summer, harvest, autumn, and the nevada , winter. Goya had become, and rightly, very satisfied with them, then years later repeated them, in small, for the decoration of a Cabinet of the Duchess of Osuna in his fifth of the Alameda. The nevada is exceptional as a study in grays and whites of refined harmony, in which there is evidence of the Studio of Velazquez.

The Dukes of Osuna and his sons

1788
Canvas. 2.25 x 1.74
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Goya was the portrait painter par excellence of the Middle bourgeois, cult and intellectualized, of the progressive end of the XVIII century Madrid. Friend of writers, architects, bankers and politicians, also concludes by contact with the aristocracy; protect the duchesses of Osuna and Alba, and finally, as a painter of the King, he makes portraits to the Royal family.

Its capacity for analysis of the model, its psychological penetration and his technical mastery, which resolves the depth with a prodigious facility, make it one of the greatest portraitists of the history of painting. Of the most cruel too, because his relentless gaze penetradora unforgiving corner of the conscience, and leaves us, people that pose before it, true moral portraits, x-rays of the thought, which express, along with all the outward appearance of the character, the contents of his soul and the trial, often bitter, that he deserves it.

Why are doubly pleasing those portraits which warns that the artist has approached its model with liking or sympathy. This is true in the Dukes of Osuna and his sons. The Dukes, protectors of Goya, open you the doors of their intimacy and Goya, in 1790, portrays them with obvious affection that is extreme especially in children, the more truly infantile, even in his dreamy melancholy, many painted Goya, who always kept a honda tenderness toward children.

The smallest of the children, sitting on a cushion, would, over time, director of the Prado, from 1821 to 1823. The range of color, refined and agreed in silver grey, is masterful delicacy. The box was given to the Prado in 1897 by the descendants of the portrayed.

Portrait of the Countess of el Carpio (La Solana)

Towards 1794-1795
Canvas. 1.81 x 1.22
Musée du Louvre, Paris.

As varied Goya's genius stands out particularly in the genre of portraiture, often treated with a surprising satirical cruelty. However this work, bequeathed in 1942 by Carlos de Beistegui, added to the distinction of the model a harmony of colour, with shades of grey, black and white, pink and lilac, that it reinforces even more.

The portrait depicts María Rita Barrenechea and Morante, married in 1775 with the count de Carpio, who acquired the title of Marquis of la Solana little time before the death of his wife, in 1795. Fabric, so mysteriously simple, perhaps evokes the feeling of the proximity of death in a sensitive and cultured woman; in any case, seems to be proposing the overcoming of the reality, the art or the spirit, which can be found in other works of the "grey period" immediately prior to the crisis of 1792 and the deafness of Goya; or, if you prefer, prior to 1794, year in which the painter resumed its activity.

Don Andrés de el Peral [detail]

1795-1798
Table. 0.95 x 0.66
National Gallery, London.

Portrayed, Andrés de el Peral, worked as a painter and Gilder of the Spanish Royal family from 1770-1820 and, therefore, was a colleague of Goya, named this painter of the King in 1786. Peral was famous as a collector of paintings, especially of Spanish artists of the 17TH and 18th centuries, among which there were a large number of small paintings of Goya bullfighting themes or genre scenes.

Sitting in a stand upright on the Chair and gazing at the Viewer, PEAR appears as a severe person. Goya expressed something of the character of the portrayed through the somber palette and the captivating tone of the picture. The work of Goya as a painter, his skill in creating brilliant effects with limited means and its penetrating observation of the sitters are admirably present in this austere portrait.

The painter Francisco Bayeu

1795
Canvas. 1.12 x 0.84
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Painted in 1795 to be exhibited at the Academy of San Fernando on the occasion of the posthumous homage to the session, Goya has left here one of its most beautiful, sober and expressive portraits. Francisco Bayeu, his brother-in-law, was well known to him. In 1786 he had portrayed him already on a superb canvas of the Valencia Museum, painted in a different range, dark and dense. In this portrait appears that it followed faithfully a self-portrait of the own Bayeu, and extended in Pearl Grey uniform and luminous background his exceptional mastery in the handling of the range silver and cold.

The hard and bit sympathetic character of the authoritarian Aragonese means evidence version of Goya, long years upset with him for family and economic reasons. The picture was acquired in 1866 to the Museo de la Trinidad, where he came to the Prado Museum.

Portrait of Maria Teresa de Borbon Godoy, Countess of Chinchón

1797-1800
Canvas. 2.20 x 1.40
Gallery of the Uffizi, Florence.

The portrayed is the daughter of Luis Antonio of Bourbon and María Teresa de Vallabriga. He married in 1799 Manuel Godoy, Minister and favorite of Carlos IV and Queen María Luisa, but the marriage had to separate after the expatriation of the Minister.

Princess figure stands out from the dark background with a gorgeous blue dress very pale, changed almost to the rose. His face, slightly disdainful and capricious, is framed by a few reddish curls, blue and green ribbons and feather decorations, where the artist has turned his palette and his master's degree. The attention of Goya becomes accurate also jewelry - cuff, collar, the earrings--whose purpose is to show the range of the portrayed young. In the play pictorial features of the great artist can be seen: taste for color treated subtly and study of the character of the character, which is put in evidence in the expression of the face.

The clothed maja

1797-1798
Canvas. 0.97 x 1.90
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Famous for the legend that wanted to see in them the Duchess of Alba, the Majas are, perhaps, the most known in the work of Goya, and certainly more extraartistica literature has produced. Paradoxically, they are also works that have less documentary information. It has assumed, for technical reasons, which were painted to 1797-1798, but it is not safe to be contemporary, and nothing is actually known about them until they appear in 1808 in the collection of Godoy, qualified of "Gypsy". Since 1808 they were at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, with seized goods Godoy, and in 1901 went to the Prado Museum.

Even if the model looks the same and the position and attitude are identical, something that is not only the contrast between the dress and the naked distinguishes two Majas. The clothed maja is treated with a loose, vibrant, and free technique: more "Goya", in fact, that the naked maja.

Much less academic in its finish, the clothed maja communicates to the viewer a breath of life with malice, which made the writer Emilia Pardo Bazán described it as "more than naked", by contrast with his "aporcelanada" Companion. Fragments of pure painting as the yellow jacket with black trim or flyers of the pillow are among the most resounding successes of the brush of its author.

The naked maja

1797-1798
Canvas. 0.97 x 1.90
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

It has been thought that both majas form a diptych, so that the dressed could discover, as returning a page to the naked. It is very plausible hypothesis, such 'cheatings' were frequent, although to a lesser extent, in France and in the environment of the enlightened. In any case, the nude maja is a delicate and finished study of pearly shades, perfect as a neo-classical painting, turning and polishing the bare as a porcelain. Perhaps, precisely because of his perfection and his weight of Academy, the less "goyesco" of all production of the painter. Both works were together at the Academy from 1808, Godoy seized goods, and in 1901 went to the Prado Museum.

Arrest of Christ [sketch]

1798
Canvas. 0.40 x 0.23
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

In the same years in which cultivated with assiduity portrait and actively participates in the social life in Madrid, until deafness first, and the events of the Napoleonic war overshadow him then, isolated, Goya also cultivated religious painting to use, paying tribute on more than one occasion to the neoclassicism of Mengs, prevailing even. For this reason it has more interest, and almost exceptional quality, this superb sketch.

In 1788 the Town Council of Toledo charge you a canvas for the sacristy of the Cathedral: the Arrest of Christ (right). The box, designed as a night scene illuminated by a flashlight, was performed with great vivacity and expressive power (recent cleaning has shown), qualities that are extreme in a preparatory sketch (left), which shows a light vibration, a taste for the violent contrasts and a brush to freedom almost twin with the works of his maturity.

Certainly the feeling of Goya was already in this direction of bright and dramatic, excitement that there is need to draw with Rembrandt. The demands of the fashion and the desire to also perform the noble 'architectural style' your enlightened friends admiring, made him restraining that powerful momentum, who escapes with amazing in that small sketch freshness and intensity.

The family of Carlos IV

1800
Canvas. 2.80 x 3.36
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

On the large canvas entitled the family of Charles IV, Goya sought to evoke in some way Las Meninas by Velázquez. The first question that you should ask when looking at this well-known painting is from where and to who conceived this image that engages and includes own painter. In any case, the painting technique of Goya in this picture is exceptional richness and perfection.

Painting presents grey and transparent shadows (placed highlighted thanks to the restoration which was carried out of the canvas) that rich dresses, silks, jewels and the Brocade family sparkling blend real (the ladies carry bands of the order of Maria Luisa and the males of Carlos III). Also with restoring the canvas recovered depth and original transparency.

For the family of Carlos IV, Goya made notes of the natural, five of which are preserved in the Museo del Prado. The painter printed on fabric, with surprising simplicity and safety of touch, features of the portrayed. In the final canvas these traits, but not just change, are, however, somewhat mitigated. In the point of the infanta Doña Josefa María, Goya showed little affection he felt for her. Starkly, it represented a brujesco aspect and ugly face. In the canvas definitive Goya placed it in a second term, as it corresponded to a gray character, who lived in the shadow of the monarch.

The infanta Doña Josefa María [detail]

1800
Canvas. 0.74 x 0.60
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The extensive production of portraits that Goya held must be within a general European context in which this kind of genre painting, to the detriment of the large compositions was imposed (although historical topic painting it would recover, in part, as a result of the French Revolution). Indeed, in the middle of the 18th century portrait dominated art in Europe. The rise of this genre was such that even the term "portrait" was used to refer to any painter who weren't fat brush.

The viewer expected mainly portrait that it represented a fair resemblance with the model, but true portrait goes beyond the physical representation of a person. The painter left and right with good interpretative skills knows also capture on canvas the State of mood, morality, personal traits or social category of the model, so the end result is a much more real and truthful portrait.

Portraits of Goya must be precisely analysed in this line. In fact, Goya was a revolutionary portraitist and an acute observer. Capable of an outstanding and thorough psychological study of the model, he managed thanks to his technical mastery to expose the most characteristic and relevant represented character features. This makes him, without a doubt, one of the main portraitists of the history of painting.

However, also he is considered one of the portrait more ruthless, since relentless observation skills allowed him to make true moral portraits, genuine radiographs of thought. It not only represented in his canvases and paints the outward appearance of the model, but also the contents of the soul and judgment, often bitter, the character deserves him. The family of Charles IVis an eloquent example of this. In this work, which brings together all members of the Royal family, the master did not try, at all, hide their lack of sympathy for the most part of the represented.

For the great canvas of the family of Charles IV, Goya prepared carefully in notes of the natural, brimming with life, each of the characters. The Museum of the Prado keeps five of these wonderful studies, in which, over the reddish fabric primer, traits of the portrayed, that definitive canvas, with little modification, however somewhat dimmed its immediacy is coagulate with surprising simplicity and safety of touch.

Doña Josefa María, daughter of Carlos III and sister of Carlos IV, who had died unmarried in the following year, should not be any pleasing figure mode. Goya has extreme cruelty in this ugly and brujesco face which in the final canvas us examines, from the second term in shadow he always lived, unpleasant greedily of Harpy.

Don Francisco de Paula Antonio infante

1800
Canvas. 0.74 x 0.60
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

On the large canvas the family of Carlos IV excels this infant which, by its delicacy and fragility of children, seems to have won all the sympathies of the painter. Perhaps even more, in this study of the native, has managed to Goya capture and communicate the charm, naive and rogue at the same time, lively child, who exudes grace and tenderness and salvo in the human aspect, the sad spectacle "ludicrous", how as well said Alberti, of that Court. Observed, such as pure painting, lightness and safety of touches, hardly restregados, suggesting the waist and the band in very light sketch.

The woman of the fan

1805-1807
Canvas. 1.03 x 0.83
Musée du Louvre, Paris.

As a court portraitist, Goya did not show is more accommodating than Velázquez; his sarcastic images put in evidence the taras physical and moral models, as if were models of all humanity in decline. However, in the case of female portraits as the de la Solana, the Duchess of Alba, or the Countess of Chinchon, the despair yields before a vital and pictorial search undertaken under the sign, not so much anguish and melancholy, and in which the dominant colour and style are closely related to the meaning.

This portrait, acquired by the Louvre in 1858, is a representation of bust of an unknown young woman, perhaps the daughter-in-law of Goya. The work must date from the years 1805-1807, but in it we find, if not the feeling of the supernatural that emanated from La Solana, at least the grey harmonies which later loved Edouard Manet, enhanced by the suggestion of Pearl transparency of meat.

The conventional attitude and treatment on a very simple plain background dan, in fact, chance for a masterpiece which sets a noticeable difference between the "Finish" of the face and the modernity of the brushwork in the treatment of the dress.

Dona Isabel Cobos de Porcel

1806
Canvas. 0.82 x 0.54
National Gallery, London.

This beautiful woman is clothed Maja, according to popular fashion women existing in late 18th century and early 19th. Her husband Antonio Porcel was also portrayed by Goya the same year (1806), as an expression of the gratitude of the painter for the hospitality received from the marriage, surely in his house in Granada. Porcel was protected from Godoy, a favourite of Queen María Luisa, and partner of a friend of Goya, writer and liberal politician Jovellanos.

Goya must feel satisfied with this portrait, because he exhibited at the Royal Academy of San Fernando. The beauty and liveliness of the portrayed and dress appeal, which does not hide the brightness of silk under the mantle, are paired with the ability of Goya in the invoice. Goya included women in some of his works to satirize the insanity and vanity of the sex, but the artist was also able to respond to the vision of a dazzling woman sure its beauty and position.

The Colossus or panic

1808 1812
Canvas. 1.16 x 1.05
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

With the arrival of the new century, Goya become a lucid chronicler who described as anyone the esperpento, violence and, ultimately, the terrible reality surrounding him. It is the expressionist Goya's "black paintings". A preamble of this series of paintings is the canvas that carries the title of the Colossus or panic, made towards 1810-1812 and preserved in the Museo del Prado.

This enigmatic painting (which still, without doubt, the nightmares of the war) announces, as for their technique and environment, the visions that they will reach their point of maximum expressiveness in the last years of the life of the painter. The real significance and thematic intent of this canvas is still vague. Something huge and terrifying it stands against the helpless humanity and puts it on the run. Only an ass, picture of ignorance and unconsciousness, remains quiescent and undaunted.

Multiple interpretations and meanings of the giant have been exposed. There are those who want to see an allusion to Napoleon, others see a symbol of war, hunger, cruelty, or simply fear of the unknown. In any case the box introduces us to the bleak world in which are nine Goya in recent years. And by contrast it reveals also delicacies and wisdoms of execution, with light fillings given with spatula and vigorous strokes of brush, masterful modernity. Picture entered in the Museo del Prado in 1930 with the legacy Fernández Durán.

The Duke of Wellington

1812-1814
Table. 1.64 x 0.52
National Gallery, London.

The Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) was a general under the command of the British forces who fought in Spain during the war of independence and defeated the French troops of José Bonaparte at the battle of Vitoria in 1813. Goya painted this portrait in Madrid, during the short stay of the Duke in the city. The artist added the Golden Fleece, the military gold cross medals, the order of the bath, the Portuguese order of the tower and sword and the Spanish cross of San Fernando.

The medals are painted with the typical ease of the last works of Goya. When the box from the right it shows the thickness of the paint. It is believed that Goya applied pigment with anything that had a hand: brush, sponge, fingers or even the handle of a spoon. The Duke's face is painted with great precision, but with characteristic freedom, making this picture one of the finest portraits of the painter.

The shootings of May 3rd

1814
Canvas. 2.66 x 3.45
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

The canvas the shootings of May 3 in the mountains of Madrid's Príncipe Pio is one of the highest achievements of Spanish painting and, probably, one of the landmarks of universal painting. Certainly, in addition to its artistic excellence, it can be considered one of the most dramatic historical-themed pictures from the history of art.

The intense passion that inspired the composition got this painting of Goya was more than a reminder of a fact, and much more than a simple also harangues or a manifest as a result of the patriotic fervor of the author. The painter, by the dramatic intensity of the facts that tells, was able to express in all its violence, but with sobriety and extreme efficiency, the relentless cruelty of man for man and at the same time his exasperated and rebellious desire for freedom.

But the success of the work lies not only in its significance, but also in its extraordinary sense of anticipation. In it, Goya knew how to distill the most personal of his technique, which leads to a visual language of force unknown so far and opens the doors (even in the early 19th century) latest expressionism.

It is known that Goya observed these bloody episodes from his fifth and he took notes the same night that happened the facts, from which comes the extraordinary realism of his painting and his deep sincerity. Thus witnessed it his servant Isidro, who left to posterity a curious narrative of facts, at once vibrant and emotional: "from this same window my master saw the shootings with a telescope in his right hand and a blunderbuss loaded with a handful of bullets on the left. If they reach the French come here, my master and I are other Daoiz y Velarde."

Isidro told also that when approaching midnight Goya ordered that he take the blunderbuss and follow him: "went to the mountain from Príncipe Pío, where the poor shot were still unburied. It was a moonlit night, but as the sky was filled with black clouds as soon it was clear how dark. The hairs I came to tip when I saw that my master, with the blunderbuss in one hand and the wallet in the other, I guided to the dead (...). Then, sitting in an embankment, at the foot of the dead, were my master opened his wallet, put it on their knees and waited for the moon through a cloud that hid it. Under the embankment it hovered, snarled and gasping something (...), but my master remained so calm preparing his pencil and your carton. At last the moon lit up as if it were day. In the midst of pools of blood we saw a lot of corpses, some face down, other upside down, this is the stance that while kneeling kisses the Earth, with the raised hand."

The pictorial solution embodied in this painting translates a real drama, which seems, without a doubt, captured directly from the reality. Contemplating painting is therefore credible narrative of Isidro, servant. Goya witnessed probably the tragic events that collect their brushes and took notes on the same stage where the shootings took place.

On the canvas, the soldiers responsible for the implementation are as impersonal automatons, without faces and perfect and disciplined training. The victims, on the other hand, constitute a rough and heartbreaking group, whose faces express the horror. The bodies of the dead are piled, twisted foreshortened, on the bloodied floor. A huge Lantern lights violently a figure kneeling, dressed with white shirt and with arms raised, which is about to be shot and that is the main point of attention of the box. Behind this figure other characters witness the drama; some cover their ears not to hear the shots, others hide the face in his hands to not witness the horror.

The scene is to fund a desolate mountain, behind which stands the dark silhouette of Madrid. The Group of soldiers, transformed into executioners, fulfills its mission without Sanaa, with the cold precision of an inexorable machine to kill, but the bland and uniform row comprising embodies with a heartbreaking rawness all the dark and cruel of the human condition.

The two may or the charge of the Mamelukes

1814
Canvas. 2.66 x 3.45
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

After the war of independence, in March 1814 received Goya of the Government of the Regency (still had not returned Fernando VII) commissioned to perpetuate, passing them to the canvas, the notable actions of the heroic popular insurrection against Napoleon's troops.

The fruits of this initiative were two works which virtually unanimously considered the best of its production: the canvas Dos de mayo, also known as the charge of the Mamelukes in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid, and the titled the massacre on May 3 in the mountains of Madrid's Príncipe Pio. Both pictures were performed that same year and are preserved in the Museo del Prado.

The canvas plasma master mode all the violence of the popular outbreak of the Dos de Mayo in response to the call against the invader. His technique and his passion was to leave deep marks on all the patriotic painting of romanticism, anticipating the Delacroix's liberty leading the people. With great skill, the focus of the struggle of the people of the African troops (Mamluks), who accompanied the French, get, along with a better celebration of color, evoke ancestral Spanish violence against the moro, which no doubt had to count on those violent times.

Historiographic analysis has always identified stage with the Puerta del Sol, although none of buildings collected by Goya brush allows you to affirm it. Perhaps it is logical to think that the large rectangular building is Monteleon Park. During the Spanish civil war (1936-1939), when the canvas was transferred from Madrid to Barcelona to subtract it from the dangers to which the proximity of the front exposed it, the truck carrying it crashed and the painting was torn. Responsible for the restoration process decided not to reinstate the fragment of canvas deteriorated, as testament to the vicissitudes suffered.

Bullfighting: Misfortune occurred in the stands

1816
Etching. 0.25 x 0.36

The pessimism of the work of Goya will be increasing from the war and after the death, in 1812, his wife, Josefa Bayeu. Already septuagenario, in 1816, he published his famous series of prints, bullfighting, thirty-three prints not exempt of cruelty, as the number 21, titled misfortunes in laying.

Nonsense: The raptor horse

1816-1824
Etching. 0.25 x 0.36

The series of nonsense (18 prints published in 1864) was created between 1816 and 1824. Goya also worked at this stage in the last albums of drawings. Both productions were, without a doubt, the final creative phase of the painter.

Thus, the symbolism present in nonsense rampant or raptor horse (the mountains on the horizon look like monstrous animals or rats) is not easy to interpret, but the visual impact created by the image is outstanding. Represented girl holds a tortuous foreshortening and debate in the air before the rush of the horse, which is the image of a monumental statue of the romantic.

After the return of Fernando VII to Spain as absolute King, Goya moved to Bordeaux and, despite his precarious health, old but lucid teacher continued painting tirelessly. It is admirable, in this sense, one of the drawings of the Album G which, accompanying the decrepit figure of an elderly bearded and supported by two sticks, one can read "even I learn". No currency better summarizes the enlightened spirit of the era, whose battle cry was: "dare to know!."

Saturn devouring a son

1820-1823
Mural painting passed to canvas. 1.46 x 0.83
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Elder and with serious health problems, during the short-lived reign of José Bonaparte, Goya bought a villa on the banks of the Manzanares, with the intention of turning it into its final home. Around 1820 began to decorate the walls leading from the House, then known as the "fifth of the deaf", with the wall paintings which receive the name of "black paintings", both for its range of color, reduced almost to white, to black and determined greenish Brown or Golden tones, as by its black significance of gloomy pessimism.

Interpretation in detail has yet many dark spots, but the general idea of the evil of the world, the blind cruelty and futile hope, they seem to be sufficiently explicit. Perhaps all these tormenting visions, the most terrible is the painting entitled Saturn devouring a child. The myth, as it is well known, alludes to the devouring time of your own creatures. The old Goya, haunted by its desolate vision of the world, felt with painful intensity step nonsense of the time who met him to death.

This canvas is, therefore, one of its cruelest visions and one of the starting points of modern expressionism. Hence he may qualify an expressionist avant the lettreGoya. All the paintings of the House (in which Goya barely inhabited, as in 1823, to March to France, gave his grandson) were acquired in 1873 by the Belgian baron Émile d'Erlanger, who gave them to canvas and gave them to the Prado in 1881.

Two old eating

1820-1823
Mural painting passed to canvas. 0.53 x 0.85
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Within the so-called "black paintings" are different works that, as two old eating, have allowed to qualify for Goya's forerunner of expressionism. The harrowing vision of old age as Supreme curse, so much tradition in Spanish literature, is expressed here with a cruel hardness of the deepest expressionist vein. Gluttony, in the edentulous mouths of these monstrous old, acquires an almost diabolical expression.

The coven

1820-1823
Mural painting passed to canvas. 1.40 x 4.38
Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Having rid already anecdotal subjects, the "black paintings", ballast essential and raw, they are corrosive, similar to the way in which acts the acid that roe preparation of aquatint or etching plate. Thus, in mural painting entitled the coven (initially located in one of the walls of the dining room of the fifth) Goya expressed his vision of the world so shocking. A deformed and somber crowd loves evil, which, as a Billy goat and habit of fraile, receives the homage of that humanity. Only on the right, somewhat apart from the composition, a figure female, young, blanket with sleeves, opens a question about its significance.

Read the complete biography of Francisco de Goya

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas