38 Facts About Goya

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker.

Goya is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

Goya was born to a middle-class family in 1746, in Fuendetodos in Aragon.

Goya studied painting from age 14 under Jose Luzan y Martinez and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs.

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Goya became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786 and this early portion of his career is marked by portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and Rococo-style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.

Goya was guarded, and although letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts.

Goya had a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 which left him deaf, after which his work became progressively darker and pessimistic.

Goya was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France.

In 1799, Goya became Primer Pintor de Camara, the highest rank for a Spanish court painter.

Goya remained in Madrid during the war, which seems to have affected him deeply.

Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may or may not have been his lover.

Goya's body was later re-interred in the Real Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid.

Goya oversaw the gilding and most of the ornamentation during the rebuilding of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, the principal cathedral of Zaragoza.

Goya's education seems to have been adequate but not enlightening; he had reading, writing and numeracy, and some knowledge of the classics.

At age 14 Goya studied under the painter Jose Luzan, where he copied stamps for 4 years until he decided to work on his own, as he wrote later on "paint from my invention".

Goya moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs, a popular painter with Spanish royalty.

Goya clashed with his master, and his examinations were unsatisfactory.

Goya submitted entries for the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1763 and 1766 but was denied entrance into the academia.

Goya was an unknown at the time and so the records are scant and uncertain.

Goya studied with the Aragonese artist Francisco Bayeu y Subias and his painting began to show signs of the delicate tonalities for which he became famous.

Francisco Bayeu, 1765 membership of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and directorship of the tapestry works from 1777 helped Goya earn a commission for a series of tapestry cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory.

Goya had a complicated relationship to the latter artist; while many of his contemporaries saw folly in Goya's attempts to copy and emulate him, he had access to a wide range of the long-dead painter's works that had been contained in the royal collection.

Goya was beset by illness, and his condition was used against him by his rivals, who looked jealously upon any artist seen to be rising in stature.

Ever resourceful, Goya turned this misfortune around, claiming that his illness had allowed him the insight to produce works that were more personal and informal.

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Goya became friends with the King's half-brother Luis, and spent two summers working on portraits of both the Infante and his family.

In 1786, Goya was given a salaried position as painter to Charles III.

Goya painted portraits of the king and the queen, and the Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy and many other nobles.

The most popularly cited models are the Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya was sometimes thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tudo, mistress of Manuel de Godoy.

Goya became withdrawn and introspective while the direction and tone of his work changed.

Goya began the series of aquatinted etchings, published in 1799 as the Caprichos—completed in parallel with the more official commissions of portraits and religious paintings.

In 1799 Goya published 80 Caprichos prints depicting what he described as "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual".

Goya had been a successful and royally placed artist, but withdrew from public life during his final years.

Art historians assume Goya felt alienated from the social and political trends that followed the 1814 restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, and that he viewed these developments as reactionary means of social control.

Goya did not intend for the paintings to be exhibited, did not write of them, and likely never spoke of them.

Goya's stayed with him in his Quinta del Sordo villa until 1824 with her daughter Rosario.

Goya's was likely related to the Goicoechea family, a wealthy dynasty into which the artist's son, Javier, had married.

Goya's had two children before that time, and bore a third, Rosario, in 1814 when she was 26.