Goya [antikvár]

Introduction Francisco de Paula José Goya y Lucientes was born on 30th March 1746 at the village of Fuendetodos near Saragossa in Aragon. His father was a master gilder and a citizen of Saragossa. His mother, Gracia Lucientes, came of an old Aragonese family, and her son was never allowed to forget that he came of aristocratic if impoverished hidalgo stock. When Goya was a child his family returned to Saragossa from Fuendetodos and the boy was sent to the convent school of Father Joaquim for general education. Goya's father continued working as a master gilder; as such he would have been in touch with local painters and sculptors. At any rate, Goya was sent to take drawing lessons with José Luzán, a painter who worked in a debased Neapolitan manner. Goya was set by Luzán to the copying of engravings, a task that he evidently detested, for he was later to declare that much time was wasted and nothing was learned by these acts of endurance. In December 1763, Goya was in Madrid as a candidate for a place in the San Fernando Academy. He did not gain a single vote, but may at this time have met the court painter, Francisco Bayeu y Subias. Bayeu also was a former pupil of Luzán and a native of Aragon. He had a younger brother, Ramón, who became one of Goya's closest friends, and a sister, Josefa. Goya tried for the Academy once more, and again failed. He then went to Rome. In Italy he entered a competition organised by the Academy of Parma. The subject was Hannibal Surveying Italy from the Alps, and the judges, awarding Goya second place, warned him against what they thought to be a certain amount of levity in his work. He returned to Saragossa to carry out a series of wall paintings in churches, notably the frescoes in the Cathedral of El Pilar. These are cold and lifeless essays in the grand manner, a half-trained student's struggle to carry out work in another's style. Theatrical and forced, they must have been painted with great effort and at the cost of much energy; but this energy does not bring the scenes to life. They also lack the religious fervour which has often carried such work through in spite of technical deficiencies. In 1773 Goya married Bayeu's sister, Josefa, in Madrid. At a time when love matches were rare this shows that Bayeu was pleased with his protégé's progress and thought that he had some sort of future, otherwise he would not have given his consent. For his part Goya must have considered his marriage to be as much a matter of prudence as a romantic union. Bayeu now found Goya steady employment. The Bourbon King Philip V had founded, in 1720, the State tapestry factory similar to that of his French cousin at the Gobelins. The German painter Mengs was employed to reorganise the old tapestry factory and to bring it up to date. An ambitious programme of production was laid down, and the call went out for designers. Bayeu, as an old friend of Mengs, was able to speak on Goya's behalf. Between 1774-75 ^792 Goya made over sixty cartoons for tapestry designs at the new Santa Barbara factory. One series was to decorate the apartments of the Prince of Asturias in the Palace of El Pardo. They were to be gay and light-hearted, making a fit setting for the Prince's leisure hours. The subjects were open-air concerts, picnics with music, blind man's buff, romantic peasants and gossiping washerwomen, scenes from an ideal, carefree Arcadian life. This series could easily have become an empty pastiche in the manner of Boucher, whose similar designs were to be taken as a model. Instead they are much more than that. Goya produced a lyrical, harmonious pastoral poem. It seems to have been the first commission that he enjoyed and he put himself wholeheartedly into the work. Keeping within the conditions set him, he turned for his subjects to scenes of Spanish life that he knew. His peasants might seem cleaner, better clothed and fed than would generally be encountered in everyday life, yet they are very real by comparison with the French rococo nymphs and shepherds that he might have copied. The cartoons are full of Spanish light and air, and the landscapes are those that he knew well rather than imagined. Goya was now a court painter at one remove and was ordered to engrave a series from the Velasquez in the royal collection. This gave him the chance to move freely and study at will among the King's pictures, and he came to know intimately those works by Velasquez and Rembrandt to which he was later to declare his debt. In 1779 Goya was granted an audience by Charles III, and within a year he was admitted to the San Fernando