Francisco de Goya y Lucientes 1746-1828

Goya created

• About 500 oil paintings

• 280 lithographs and etchings (and he used the most modern methods)

• Nearly a thousand drawings

His life can be divided into four stages:

• Until 1793 – slow rise to maturity

• 1793 – illness that left him deaf and released pent up creative forces within him

• 1808 – Napoleonic invasion and Goya’s responses to the war.

• 1819 – a second illness, he retires to the Quinta del Sordo, the Black Paintings

First Stage: Tapestry Cartoons

• Produced for the Royal Tapestry Factory (Charles III)

• Rococo tendencies in nature and pose of figures

• Girl seems to stare at spectator, giving a sense of realism

• Clothing implies social class

• Relationship between the two?

• Parasol?

• General impression?

Blind Man´s Bluff --1789

Etchings after Velázquez

Las meninas 1773

Saint Francis of Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent -- 1788

• “The most sharply accurate vision of the collapse of the great religious and monarchic traditions of the West”

• Turning point: first use of the fantastic

• Emphasis on sinner’s naked body, expression

• Restless agony vs. pious zeal

• Rejection of idealized concept of expression (Neoclassicism)

• Emphasis on extremes

Portraits

• Rich clothing

• All the insignias of royalty, powdered wig

• Face? Impression?

• Critique?

Charles IV -- 1789

Queen María Luisa -- 1789

• Rich royal clothing• Royal insignias• Hair and hat?• Face?• Personality?• Attitude of Goya

towards her?

The Straw Mannequin -- 1791

Second Stage, after losing his hearing

• Yard of lunatics – 1793• Images of madness• Enclosure• Continuation of tendency

begun with Saint Francis of Borgia

• Alienation and despair• Movement• Use of light• Chaotic jumble of bodies

The Caprichos (Caprices) 1799

• Series of 82 etchings• Satirizing all aspects of

society:– Aristocracy– Church– Greed– Prostitution– Marriage– Folly – Cruelty– Etc.

Descendant of donkeys

Love and Death

Caprice 43

•Marks a change in the series

•The Sleep/Dream of Reason Produces Monsters

•Neoclassical or Romantic?

•The sublime

•Nightmare visions

1808 – 1814 Napoleon and the War of Independence

The 3rd of May, 1808

The 3rd of May, 1808

• Conformity of soldiers, power conveyed by abstract shape

• Victims cover their eyes, pray

• Center: man with outstretched arms = crucifixion

• Concentration of light, color on man

The disasters of the war

•Set of 82 etchings

•Realities of war:

•Violence

•Savagery

•Rape

•murder

The Colossus – between 1808-1812

• Ambiguity of giant– Ignorant, arrogant prince?

(Ferdinand VII)• Mountains= the powerful

• Donkey=nobility

– Hercules who rises up against Napoleon?

– Buried to above the knees

– Back to spectator

– Closed eyes

Ferdinand VII

• El deseado (1814)

• Period of absolutism (1814-1820), persecution of liberals

• 1820-1823 constitutional monarchy (Intervention of 100,000 Sons of Saint Louis)

• 1823-1833 Ominous Decade

Disparates or Proverbs (1816-1823)

• Not published until 1864

• Last great series of etchings

• Gives himself up to the irrational, nocturnal, fantastic, grotesque and terrifying Disparate del miedo [fear}

Los ensacados [In sacks]

The Inquisition -- 1816

Black Paintings– 1820-1823

The witches’ Sabbath

Dog on a leash or Dog fighting against

the current

Fight with Cudgels

Stephen Mark

The Milkmaid from Bordeaux

• Goya in exile in Bordeaux

• Girl has a melancholy, dreamy, far away gaze

• Color: greens and blues

• Influence on Impressionists