Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of Western art.
Paintings by Francisco Goya
Charles IV of Spain and His Family (1800)
Charles IV of Spain and His Family is an oil-on-canvas group portrait painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. He began work on the painting in 1800, shortly after he became First Chamber Painter to the royal family, and completed it in the summer of 1801.
The portrait features life-sized depictions of Charles IV of Spain and his family, ostentatiously dressed in fine costume and jewellery. Foremost in the painting are Charles IV and his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma, who are surrounded by their children and relatives. The family are dressed in the height of contemporary fashionable clothing and lavishly adorned with jewellery and the sashes of the order of Charles III.
La maja desnuda (1800)
The Naked Maja or The Nude Maja (Spanish: La maja desnuda [la ˈmaxa ðesˈnuða]) is an oil-on-canvas painting made around 1797–1800 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, and has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1901. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as La maja vestida (The Clothed Maja), also in the Prado, and usually hung next to La maja desnuda. The subject is identified as a maja or fashionable lower-class Madrid woman, based on her costume in La maja vestida.
Although the two versions of the Maja are the same size, the sitter in the clothed version occupies a slightly larger proportion of the pictorial space; according to art historian Janis Tomlinson she seems almost to "press boldly against the confines of her frame", making her more brazen in comparison to the comparatively "timid" nude portrait.
The Third of May 1808 (1814)
The Third of May 1808 in Madrid (commonly known as The Third of May 1808) and also known, in Spanish, as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo, is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of Madrid in 1808 at the start of the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's own suggestion shortly after the ousting of the French occupation and the restoration of King Ferdinand VII.
The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a ground-breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May marks a clear break from convention. By diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, it is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention".
Saturn Devouring His Son (1820)
Saturn Devouring His Son (Spanish: Saturno devorando a su hijo; also known as Saturn) is a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. The work is one of the 14 so-called Black Paintings that Goya painted directly on the walls of his house some time between 1820 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
The painting is traditionally considered a depiction of the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus, whom the Romans called Saturn, eating one of his children out of fear of a prophecy by Gaea that one of his children would overthrow him. Like all of the Black Paintings, it was not originally intended for public consumption and Goya did not provide a title or notes. Thus, its interpretation is disputed.
La maja vestida (1800)
La maja vestida (English translation: The Clothed Maja) is an oil painting on canvas created between 1800 and 1807 by the Spanish Romantic painter and printmaker Francisco Goya. It is a clothed version of the earlier La maja desnuda, which was created between 1795 and 1800. The identity of the model and that of the commissioner have not been confirmed. However, art historians and scholars have suggested she is María Cayetana de Silva or Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó.
The paintings were never publicly exhibited during Goya's lifetime, so it is also unknown if they were created as pendant paintings, to be displayed as a pair. However, since 1901 they have been exhibited together at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid. Beforehand, it was twice in the collection of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, also in Madrid, before being "sequestered" by the Spanish Inquisition between 1814 and 1836. The maja vestida and maja desnuda were both first cited in an 1808 inventory, when Godoy's assets were seized by King Ferdinand VII.
Black Paintings (1820)
The Black Paintings (Spanish: Pinturas negras) is the name given to a group of 14 paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, probably between 1820 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and his bleak outlook on humanity. In 1819, at the age of 72, Goya moved into a two-storey house outside Madrid that was called Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man's Villa). It is thought that Goya began the paintings in the following year. Although the house had been named after the previous owner, who was deaf, Goya too was nearly deaf at the time as a result of an unknown illness he had suffered when he was 46. The paintings originally were painted as murals on the walls of the house, later being "hacked off" the walls and attached to canvas by owner Baron Frédéric Émile d'Erlanger. They are now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
After the Napoleonic Wars and the internal turmoil of the changing Spanish government, Goya developed an embittered attitude toward mankind. He had an acute, first-hand awareness of panic, terror, fear and hysteria. He had survived two near-fatal illnesses, and grew increasingly anxious and impatient in fear of relapse. The combination of these factors is thought to have led to his production of the Black Paintings. Using oil paints and working directly on the walls of his dining and sitting rooms, Goya created works with dark, disturbing themes. The paintings were not commissioned and were not meant to leave his home. It is likely that the artist never intended the works for public exhibition: "these paintings are as close to being hermetically private as any that have ever been produced in the history of Western art."
The Second of May 1808 (1814)
The Second of May 1808, also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes (Spanish: El 2 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid, La lucha con los mamelucos or La carga de los mamelucos), is a painting by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. It is a companion to the painting The Third of May 1808 and is set in the Calle de Alcalá near Puerta del Sol, Madrid, during the Dos de Mayo Uprising. It depicts one of the many people's rebellions against the French occupation of Spain that sparked the Peninsular War.
Both paintings were completed within a two-month period in 1814. Today they are displayed in Madrid's Museo del Prado.
The Dog (Goya) (1820)
The Dog (Spanish: El Perro) is the name usually given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It shows the head of a dog gazing upwards. The dog itself is almost lost in the vastness of the rest of the image, which is empty except for a dark sloping area near the bottom of the picture: an unidentifiable mass which conceals the animal's body. The placard for The Dog painting in The Prado indicates the dog is in distress, apparently drowning.
The Dog is one of Goya's Black Paintings, which he painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823 when he was in his mid-70s, living alone and suffering from acute mental and physical distress. He did not intend the paintings for public exhibition, and they were not removed from the house until 50 years after Goya had left.
Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) (1820)
Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat (Spanish: Aquelarre or El gran cabrón) are names given to an oil mural by the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, completed sometime between 1820 and 1823. It depicts a Witches' Sabbath and evokes themes of violence, intimidation, ageing and death; Satan hulks in the form of a goat in moonlit silhouette over a coven of terrified old witches. Goya was then around 75 years old, living alone and suffering from acute mental and physical distress.
The work is one of the fourteen Black Paintings that Goya applied in oil on the plaster walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo. The series was completed in secret: he did not title any of the works or leave a record of his intentions in creating them. Absent of fact, Witches' Sabbath is generally seen by some art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age, a condemnation of superstition and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. As with the other works in the group, Witches' Sabbath reflects its painter's disillusionment and can be linked thematically to his earlier etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as well as the Disasters of War print series, another bold political statement published only posthumously.
Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1787)
Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga is a large full-length portrait in oil painted in 1787–88 by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It depicts a boy three or four years of age, standing in red clothes, with birds and cats. It is also known as Goya's "Red Boy". It was described by art historian Claus Virch in 1967 as "one of the most appealing and successful portraits of children ever painted, and also one of the most famous". The painting has been held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, since 1949.
The painting was commissioned by the boy's father, Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán (1756–1816), conde de Altamira, who held many titles and was also a director of the Banco de San Carlos. Altamira was one of the six dignitaries of the newly formed Banco de San Carlos painted by Goya between 1785 and 1788. In 1786, after painting several portraits of the court, Goya was nominated painter to Charles III, and continued from 1789 as court painter of his successor Charles IV.
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux (1827)
The Milkmaid of Bordeaux (Spanish: La lechera de Burdeos) is an oil-on-canvas painting completed between 1825 and 1827, generally attributed to the Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746–1828). This painting is believed to be one of Goya's last works, completed the year before his death, and considered one of Goya's masterpieces.
Although the picture is held in great esteem and widely admired by critics and the public, doubt has been cast by art historians as to whether it is an actual Goya.
The Colossus (painting) (1818)
The Colossus (also known as The Giant), is known in Spanish as El Coloso and also El Gigante (The Giant), El Pánico (The Panic) and La Tormenta (The Storm). It is a painting traditionally attributed to Francisco de Goya that shows a giant in the centre of the canvas walking towards the left hand side of the picture. Mountains obscure his legs up to his thighs and clouds surround his body; the giant appears to be adopting an aggressive posture as he is holding one of his fists up at shoulder height. A dark valley containing a crowd of people and herds of cattle fleeing in all directions occupies the lower third of the painting.
The painting became the property of Goya's son, Javier Goya, in 1812. The painting was later owned by Pedro Fernández Durán, who bequeathed his collection to Madrid's Museo del Prado, where it has been kept since 1931.