LITMIR.BIZ

      The capital city had been transformed during the eighteenth century by the Spanish Bourbon kings, who widened streets, opened piazzas and constructed numerous religious and civic buildings. They also expanded the five Habsburg palaces and created three new royal residences, requiring a team of designers to decorate their interiors.

      In 1775, Anton Mengs (1728–79), first court painter to Charles III, returned to Madrid and was given the responsibility of overseeing the execution of numerous tapestry drawings.

      Mary, Queen of Martyrs

      1780–1781

      fresco on the church’s dome

      El Pilar, Saragossa

      The Goyas move came in response to his first royal commission, to design a series of drawings for tapestries to hang in the personal dining room of the future King Charles IV, in the Escorial Palace. Goya was given the commission at the suggestion of Mengs, who had earlier commissioned Francisco Bayeu to work on the new royal palaces. For several years, Goya was gainfully employed painting further series of drawings for the Royal Tapestry Factory.

      St Bernardino of Siena Preaching before Alonso V of Aragon

      1781–1783

      oil on canvas, 480 × 300 cm

      San Francisco el Grande, Madrid

      During the 1780s, Goya’s career prospered. Finally elected to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, he became its Assistant Director of Painting in 1785. In June 1786, he was named an official court painter at a salary of 15,000 reales per year (equivalent to about £150 at that time), and in 1789 was promoted to Court Painter, as a result of which he began to mix with a glittering array of royalty, aristocracy and statesmen, and became a celebrated portrait painter.

      Maria Teresa de Bourbon

      1783

      oil on canvas, 132.3 × 116.7 cm

      Mellon Bruce collection, Washington

      However, the son of humble parents and born far from the splendours of the court, Goya never became a courtier in spite of his official position. He painted not only members of the fashionable elite, but also artisans, labourers and the victims of poverty. He sympathized with the Spanish Enlightenment, whose members disagreed in principle with all that the court stood for.

      Portrait of the Count of Floridablanca and Goya

      1784

      oil on canvas, 262 × 166 cm

      Bank of Spain, Madrid

      Disturbed by the social inequalities of the day, the Enlightenment felt that the monarchy, through blindness and neglect, had done little to bring Spain out of the Middle Ages. Goya became a proficient etcher and recorded his personal observations in this medium.

      In these, and in the numerous drawings he made in private sketchbooks, he ridiculed the vulgarity and follies of humanity. His critical vision appears to have been intensified by the deafness with which he was inflicted after an infection in 1792.

      The Family of the Infante Don Luis

      1784

      oil on canvas, 248 × 330 cm

      Corte di Mamiano, Parma

      The early years of the nineteenth century were disastrous for Spain. On 21 October 1805, the Spanish fleet was destroyed by the British at Trafalgar, cutting Spain off from its colonies. In 1806, Spain agreed to help Napoleon in the conquest of Portugal. Thousands of French troops poured into Spain. In 1808 King Charles IV abdicated in favour of his dim-witted son, Ferdinand VII, and the old king fled to Bayonne in France with Queen Maria Luisa and Manuel Godoy, his Prime Minister.

      Countess-Duchess of Benavente

      1785

      oil on canvas, 104 × 80 cm

      Bartolomé

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