What Does Goya Cite as the 3 Main Influences on His Art

"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."

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"I have had three masters; Nature, Velazquez, and Rembrandt."

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"The object of my work is to written report the authenticity of events."

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"My work is very elementary. My art reveals idealism and truth."

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Summary of Francisco Goya

Goya occupies a unique position within the history of Western fine art, and is frequently cited as both an Former Principal and the first truly modern artist. His art embodies Romanticism'due south emphasis on subjectivity, imagination, and emotion, characteristics reflected most notably in his prints and afterwards private paintings. At the same time, Goya was an astute observer of the world around him, and his art responded directly to the tumultuous events of his twenty-four hour period, from the liberations of the Enlightenment, to the suppressions of the Inquisition, to the horrors of state of war following the Napoleonic invasion. Both for its creativity and its political engagement, Goya's art had an enormous impact on later modern artists. His unflinching scenes from the Peninsular War presaged the works of Pablo Picasso in the xx^th century, while his exploration of bizarre and dreamlike subjects in the Caprichos laid the foundation for Surrealists like Salvador Dalí. Goya's influence extends to the 21^st century, as contemporary artists take also fatigued inspiration from the artist's grotesque imagery and searing social commentary.

Accomplishments

• Goya's formal portraits of the Castilian Courtroom are painted in a lavish virtuoso style, and highlight the wealth and power of the regal household. On the other paw, the works take been seen to incorporate veiled, even sly, criticisms of the ineffectual rulers and their circle.
• Goya is i of the greatest printmakers of all fourth dimension, and is famous for his achievements in etching and aquatint. He created iv major print portfolios during his career: the Caprichos, Proverbios, Tauromaquia, and The Disasters of War. Peradventure even more than than his paintings, these works reflect the artist's originality and his truthful opinions about the social and political events of his 24-hour interval. The subject area matter of his etchings veers from dreamlike to grotesque, documentary to imaginary, and humorous to harshly satirical.
• Women occupy a central place within Goya's oeuvre, and his images of majas (the stylish and outlandish members of Kingdom of spain'south lower classes in the xviii^th and 19^th centuries), witches, and queens are some of his most daring and modern interpretations, depicting women in possession of their own powers, whether political or sexual. Many of these works take led to speculation almost Goya'south individual life, for example his supposed affair with the Duchess of Alba.
• Goya'southward late paintings are among the darkest and nigh mysterious of his creations. His series of 14 paintings from his farmhouse on the outskirts of Madrid (the then-called "Black Paintings") contain images of violence, despair, evil, and longing. They are the pessimistic expressions of an aging, deaf creative person who was disillusioned with society and struggling with his own sanity. Their exploration of the night forces at piece of work in his own subconscious foreshadows the art of the Expressionists and Surrealists in the twenty^th century.

Biography of Francisco Goya

To pass safely through the Spanish countryside occupied by the invading French army, Goya coated his works with a layer of whitewash, and so that his depictions of the war's atrocities could escape detection and exist revealed later, as he believed, that art "is about one middle telling another center where he found salvation."

Important Art by Francisco Goya

Progression of Art

1800

Charles IV of Spain and His Family

This portrait of the Spanish royal family was made at the height of Goya's career as a court painter. Different many of his earlier gild and court portraits, which hewed more closely to the genre's conventions of flattery, this painting signals a new direction for the artist in its unflinchingly (some might say grotesquely) realistic depictions of its sitters. The artist based the composition on Velázquez'south Las Meninas, which also includes a cocky-portrait of the artist in the deed of painting the majestic family. Here, Goya depicts himself in the shadows, continuing in forepart of a large canvas (presumably the aforementioned one we now behold) in the far left background.

At the middle of the limerick, brilliantly lit, is the effigy of Queen Maria Luisa, who holds the manus of her son Francisco (in brilliant red) and her daughter, Maria Isabel. Male monarch Charles stands to her left: widely thought to be an ineffectual leader, his off-eye placement provides a clue about the power dynamic of the family too as their foibles and failings. Indeed, the Queen was believed to hold the real ability, along with Prime Government minister Manuel Godoy, with whom she had an affair (her illegitimate children are at the far left of the sail, i in blue, the other in orange). Goya's subversive critique - bearded as a glorifying portrait - of the abuse of Charles Iv's reign is further enhanced by the subject of a painting hanging in the background, which shows the Biblical story of the immoral and incestuous Lot and his daughters.

From a technical standpoint, the painting dazzles with detail, especially in the luxurious garments and jewels worn by the family. Goya's brushwork is loose and spontaneous in other areas of the composition. Rembrandt's influence on the artist is apparent in this work, notably in the play of calorie-free and shadow and in the overall warm tonality of Goya's palette.

Oil on canvas - Museo del Prado, Madrid

1797

The Black Duchess

Goya was himself the field of study of scandal and rumor particularly when it came to his relationships with members of Spain's social elite. For case, he was suspected of conducting a love affair with the aristocratic Maria Cayetana de Silva, the xiii^th Duchess of Alba, one of the most famous women in Kingdom of spain. Their liaison probably began later on the death of the Duke of Alba in 1796 (Goya had painted portraits of both husband and wife in 1795). Goya was no incertitude taken with the Duchess'south haughty beauty, with her curvaceous figure, alabaster complexion, and voluminous blackness curls.

Painted the year after the Knuckles's death, this portrait of the Duchess depicts her in mourning black, wearing the traditional costume of a maja, 1 of the very stylish members of Spain's lower classes known for their bold behavior. In posing equally a maja, the Duchess was making an effort to connect with the masses, despite her elevated social standing. Standing with one hand on her hip, she points toward the footing with her other hand, where Goya has lightly fatigued his proper noun in the dun-colored sand. When the painting was restored, the word "solo" was uncovered next to Goya's name, implying that the artist was her only beloved (though she wears ii rings on her mitt, one inscribed "Alba", the other "Goya").

Though the painting was commissioned by the Duchess, Goya kept it in his possession for 15 years, indicating his strong attachment to the work and its subject area, or, possibly, the Duchess' disability to take a piece of work that then openly flaunted an affair. Much of the imagery that would populate Goya'southward prints and drawings post-obit the end of their affair - women as fickle temptresses, men as cuckolded fools, lovers tortured past uncontrollable passions - has pb art historians to suspect that his heart had been broken by the Duchess.

Oil on panel - New York Hispanic Club

c. 1797-99

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Goya is as famous for his prints as he is for his paintings, and is known as one of the peachy masters of the etching and aquatint techniques. The get-go of his four major print series was Los Caprichos, which consists of 80 numbered and titled plates. The creative person's stated purpose in making the series was to illustrate "the innumerable foibles and follies to be constitute in whatsoever civilized society, and from the common prejudices and mendacious practices which custom, ignorance, or cocky-interest take made usual." Goya began working on the plates effectually 1796, after an undiagnosed illness left him deaf and collection him to retreat into a cocky-imposed isolation.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, plate 43 in the series, depicts a sleeping man (thought to be Goya himself), surrounded by a swarm of foreign flying creatures. These are the "monsters" of the title, which invade the heed when reason is surrendered to imagination and dreams. Many of the animals Goya depicts agree symbolic significant: the owls and bats stand for ignorance and evil, while the watchful lynx at the artist'south feet - a creature known for its power to see in darkness - alerts us to the importance of distinguishing fact from fiction. The bat with the caprine animal caput may be a satanic reference, and allusions to witchcraft tin be institute throughout the series. However, as with many of Goya'south prints, the intended significant of the various symbols can be hard to deduce with certainty.

The Caprichos introduces the night subject field matter and mood that would proceed to define Goya's piece of work until the stop of his life. These works, based on extensive drawings in pen and ink, were expressions of the artist's personal behavior and ideas, created outside his official piece of work for the court and influential patrons. These prints were greatly influential to later Surrealists like Dalí in their mingling of realism and dream symbolism.

Etching and aquatint - Private Collection

c. 1797-1800

The Nude Maja

The Nude Maja (La Maja Desnuda) was one of the first paintings Goya made for Prime number Government minister Manuel de Godoy, 1 of his principal patrons. The painting features an unknown model, believed to exist either Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudo, or the Duchess of Alba, who was Goya'due south supposed lover. The nude woman is shown reclining on a light-green velvet chaise with her artillery crossed behind her head. Her voluptuous body is angled toward the viewer, and she gazes seductively at the viewer with rosy cheeks that suggest post-coital flush. Goya broke with conventions of the nude in depicting a real woman (non a goddess or emblematic figure) with pubic hair, and having her look directly at the viewer; these daring details would influence later modern artists like Manet, whose Olympia certainly owes a debt to the nude Maja.

Goya also created a companion slice - La Maja Vestida, or The Clothed Maja - which offers a more than chaste version of the same female portrait. Both works were confiscated past the Spanish Inquisition, just at present proudly hang next to each other in Espana's most important museum - The Prado.

Oil on canvas - Museo del Prado, Madrid

1810

An Heroic feat! With Dead Men!

Goya'southward response to the atrocities of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain and the half-dozen-year conflict that followed was to create a suite of 82 prints. Titled The Disasters of War, the works nowadays a wholesale indictment of wartime, and are divided into three sections: the first shows scenes from the Peninsular War, the second the tragic dearth that hit Madrid in 1811-12, and the tertiary a series of allegorical prints lampooning the repressive government of Ferdinand VII. The portfolio includes disturbing scenes of rape, torture, violence, and suffering, and is equally critical of both the French and Spanish factions. Goya had been an eyewitness to the state of war at its inception, but many of the scenes he depicted were based on either second-hand accounts or the artist's imagination. It is hard to imagine xx^th-century war photography (i thinks of the famous images from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, for instance) without Goya's Disasters.

In An Heroic Feat! With Dead Men!, plate 39 of the serial, Goya depicts three male corpses, whose bodies have been mutilated, castrated, and tied to a tree. Although some have identified the men as French soldiers because of their facial pilus, Goya deliberately obscured their nationality in society to illustrate the mutual brutality of Spanish guerilla fighters and French soldiers towards each another. The bodies of the victims are drawn co-ordinate to classical conventions, with well-proportioned, muscular physiques (even if dismembered and tortured). The undeniable beauty of their forms only enhances the epitome'due south tragic touch on, and furthers the idea that war and violence are the enemies of dazzler and reason.

The Disasters of State of war could not be published during Goya's lifetime due to the damning political message it contained, and did not appear to the public until 35 years after Goya's death. The prints inspired a respective serial of miniature sculptures by the British artists and twin brothers, Jake and Dinos Chapman, at present in the drove of the Tate.

Etching, lavis, and drypoint - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1814

The Third of May, 1808

Napoleon's armies invaded Spain in 1808, bringing an end to Charles IV'south reign (and the Enlightenment Era in Spain) and signaling the commencement of the Peninsular War. Goya painted The Third of May, 1808 and its companion piece, The Second of May, 1808 for the Castilian government, which commissioned the works to celebrate the expulsion of the French regular army in 1814. The stated purpose of the pictures was to "perpetuate past means of his brush the about notable and heroic deportment of our glorious coup against the Tyrant of Europe."

Here nosotros see French soldiers executing unarmed Spaniards in retaliation for their rebellion the day earlier. The focal point of the composition is the unarmed man in the brightly lit center, standing with his arms raised in surrender. The dead bodies of but-executed rebels lie at his anxiety, while a grouping of soonhoped-for shot rebels stand behind him. The executioners, whose faces Goya obscures, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their bayonets pointed at the Spanish hero. The anonymity of the French firing team contrasts with the individualized faces of the victims, and drives dwelling house the message of brutal oppression. The painting is considered to be one of the first truly modern images of war, and influenced future works by both Édouard Manet (Execution of Emperor Maximilian) and Pablo Picasso (Massacre in Korea).

Oil on canvass - Museo del Prado, Madrid

1821-23

Witches' Sabbath

Goya spent his after life largely as a recluse - a solitary, deaf old man completely disillusioned by order. His house outside Madrid, dubbed La Quinta del Sordo, is where he completed his fourteen Blackness Paintings, practical in oils direct onto the house's plaster walls. Little is known about Goya'southward intention or thoughts in creating these pictures; he did not write nigh them in letters, nor did he provide titles for the works. They were intensely private creations, and have come to be seen past art historians as reflections of his declining physical and mental wellness. They are the expressions of Goya's deepest fears and darkest depression, and are troubling in both their nightmarish content and raw form.

Witches' Sabbath, too referred to as The Slap-up He-Goat, shows the devil in the form of a goat preaching to a group of women, presumably a coven of witches. The devil effigy is only seen as a nighttime silhouette, creating a sense of mystery around the effigy. The brushwork, which is much rougher and clumsier than in Goya's earlier works, enhances the raw and fifty-fifty apple-polishing quality of the pic, with its huddled cluster of ghastly characters. However, Goya employed the aforementioned theatrical contrasts of light and dark as seen in The 3rd of May, 1808, which here serves only to highlight the repulsive faces of the women. A big portion of the right side of the composition was lost in the transfer from plaster to sail, and the full significant and content of the piece of work remains a mystery.

The slice is widely considered to be a criticism of the Inquisition's campaign of intimidation and persecution, which gained renewed force after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814 and the ascension of the anti-Enlightenment rex, Ferdinand Seven. Goya believed wholeheartedly in the principles of the Enlightenment, which privileged reason in a higher place religious or cult superstition, and reviled the politically motivated, oppressive practices of the Inquisition.

Oil on plaster, transferred to canvas - Museo del Prado, Madrid

c. 1821-23

Saturn Devouring His Son

Saturn Devouring His Son is another of Goya's "Black Paintings" produced at La Quinta del Sordo. It depicts the Greek myth of Titan Kronus, who ate his sons because he believed he would be overthrown by ane of them (Saturn is the Romanized version of Titan). With his small head and bulging eyes, Saturn opens wide his oral cavity to gnaw on the arm of his son. The corpse'south mutilated body (with red blood streaming from his wounds that is most shockingly vivid among the bleak, subterranean palette) recalls similar figures in The Disasters of War. The work is yet another example of Goya'due south interest in dark and horrific themes, whether documentary or mythical.

The painting has a similar palette to The Tertiary of May, 1808; night, rich colors set the overall tone, while lite draws our attention to the center of the dramatic action. Goya employed flat, broad brushstrokes and thick impasto throughout the composition; the paint appears to accept been chop-chop applied, almost equally if in a frenzied or fevered state.

Although some believe the work was inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' painting of the same theme, fine art historians such as Fred Licht have expressed doubts regarding Goya's truthful subject. For instance, Saturn is said to take eaten his sons as infants, yet the victim in Goya'south painting appears to be an developed. Too, the figure's curvaceous hips and legs call into question its gender (could it be a woman?).

1 significant aspect of the picture to note is the association between Saturn and "saturnine" temperaments, or melancholy, an of import connectedness given what is known nigh Goya'south disturbed state of listen when he painted these works. At the very least, the painting expresses the deepest, darkest aspects of his psyche, perhaps expressing the artist's own fears of losing his powers in the confront of his declining physical and mental health. On a broader political level, the work tin can exist seen within the context of Goya'due south time as an apologue of reactionary rule. Certainly the oppressive reign of Ferdinand Seven signified a refusal to adapt to the development of modernistic life and society, while the persecutions of the Inquisition cannibalized Spain'due south very soul. However, because Goya did not write about these works and never intended for them to be displayed in public, his true intentions remain a mystery.

Oil on plaster wall, transferred to canvas - Museo del Prado, Madrid

Similar Art

Influences and Connections

Influences on Artist

Influenced by Artist

• Manuel de Godoy

• Sebastian Martinez y Perez

• Juan Valdes Melendez

• Leandro Fernandez de Moratin

Useful Resources on Francisco Goya

Content compiled and written by Ximena Kilroe

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

"Francisco Goya Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Ximena Kilroe
Edited and published past The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on 06 Mar 2017. Updated and modified regularly
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Source: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/goya-francisco/

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