Biography

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746 in the isolated village of Fuendetodos in western Spain. He was the son of a gilder. His family moved to Saragossa when he was 14 and studied painting under Jose Luzan, the leading artist of Saragossa at that time. Here, he also met Francisco Bayeu who was a successful painter then and was employed by the court of Madrid in 1763. Goya eventually worked in Bayeu's studio.

At that time, to be settled in Madrid was the sole way that a local Spanish artist could earn more than just narrow recognition. The sophistication of the Spanish monarchy and its generous investment of the arts have lured most of the key painters from around Europe. Goya's evolution as an artist was greatly influenced by the two most important painters at the court – Giambattista Tiepolo, a Venetian, and Anton Raffael Mengs, a German. In 1763 and 1766 Goya failed to make it to the recently established Madrid Academy of Art. He then went to Italy in 1770 where he earned an honorable mention in a painting competition organized by the Art Academy of Parma. He returned to Spain after a year and a couple of years later, married Bayeu's sister, Josefa. Goya's climb to success was difficult and slow until he was elected a member of the Madrid Academy in 1780 and was appointed as its Deputy Director of Painting five years later. He became one of the royal painters after Charles VI was crowned in 1789. In celebration of his promotion, he added the aristocratic ‘de' to his name. By 1790 when the tapestry designs were finished, Goya dedicated most of his time doing the kinds of works he became most famous of – portraits and caricatures. It was not long that he was savouring his success, an unfortunate development drastically changed his life. He developed a strange illness that caused him temporary paralysis and partial blindness and made him permanently deaf. His illness made a major impact in his art that in 1793, while gaining back his strength, he painted a series of small oil paintings of peculiar subjects of “fantasy and invention,” as he himself described them. He told the Academy later that he had created them “In order to occupy an imagination mortified by the contemplation of my sufferings”. His colleagues could not appreciate his increasingly withdrawn and gruesome imaginative tendencies as an artist but they did not hamper Goya's rising fame in the Madrid art world. After Bayeu died in 1795, Goya was promoted to Director of Painting at the Academy. He got the esteemed commission to decorate the Madrid church of S. Antonio de la Florida in 1798 and the next year, he was appointed First Painter to the King.

Goya was rumored having a relationship with the widowed Duchess of Alba, who was believed to be the model for Goya's famous pair of paintings, The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja.

There was political stability in Spain during the first half of Goya's life. But from 1789 – 1808 during Charles IV's reign, it was tumultuous. In 1808, Charles IV was forced to resign in favor of his son Ferdinand VII. But it was not long that Ferdinand VII was forced to give up his throne to Napoleon's brother, Joseph. The French occupation roused severe unrest in Madrid and led to a bloody civil war.

Goya had to swear allegiance to the French king and got from him the Royal Order of Spain in 1811. He escaped punishment when Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne in 1814 by claiming that he never worn the medal. He also appeased the king by offering to paint for him his two prominent scenes of the Madrid rioting that had led to the war: The Second of May, 1808 and The Third of May, 1808.

Ferdinand VII kept Goya on as his First Painter even if the king hardly took any interest in him. When Goya retired from the post, the king awarded him a sumptuous pension, which allowed him to live contentedly until his last breath. He avoided public life after 1815 and worked solely for himself and for his bosom friends. He again developed a serious illness in 1819 and recovered through the help of the trendy Madrid doctor, Eugenio Garcia Arrieta whom he gratified by painting a double portrait showing himself very ill in bed being supported by Arrieta. He lived for several more years and engaged in “black paintings” until he died on April 16, 1828 in Bordeaux at the age of 82.