Duke of Medinaceli

Transcription

♪ [opening music] Perhaps the figure of Goya is as attractive for its meanings of rupture as much as the painting and like the society aroundhim was becoming eternally dissatisfied and almost an accursed at the end of his life. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was born in a small town in the province of Zaragoza called Fuendetodos, on March the 30th of 1746. His parents were part of the lower middle class at the time. The family had a house and lands in Fuendetodos, but soon moved to Zaragoza. In Zaragoza, Goya received his first lessons, and, at twelve years old, is documented in the workshop of Joseph Luzán, who introduced him to the decadent style of the late Baroque, style that influenced his early work. Zaragoza was small and Goya wanted to learn in the court, and this desire motivates the move in 1763 to Madrid. In the capital of Spain, he will be installed in the workshop of Francisco Bayeu, whose relations with contemporary artistic dictator and promoter of Neoclassicism, Anton Raphael Mengs, were excellent. Bayeu will teach Goya the lights display, the brightness and the rough outlines of the painting. 0:01:37
Eager to continue his artistic training, he decided to go to Italy on his own. In 1771, he is in Parma appearing in a contest where he got the second prize with the painting "Hannibal contemplating the Alps". The stay in Italy will be short but very productive. In the middle of 1771, he is working in Zaragoza, where he will receive his first orders within a religious theme and an entirely academic style. On July 25, 1773 in Madrid, Goya married Maria Josefa Bayeu, sister of Francisco and Ramon Bayeu, so narrowing the ties with his master. The first orders he received from the Court are due to this relationship. His destiny would be the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara, for which Goya will make cards, meaning sketches which later transformed into tapestries. The relationship with the Royal Factory lasts 18 years, where he made his most valuable cards, which presents a stunning portrait of the Spanish society of the Enlightenment, with its Majos, Majas, Manolos and nobles, focusing in the effects of light and color, although the faces of his characters do not have a particular appearance. Of course, during this time he will make other important orders. In 1780, he entered the Academy of San Fernando, where he will make a crucified Christ, now in the Prado Museum. And that same year, he decorates a dome of the Basilica del Pilar de Zaragoza, although the colorful and spirited style of the master won’t not like the Cathedral chapter and provoke a confrontation with his brother in law, Francisco Bayeu. 0:03:34 
In Madrid will start the portraits facet of Goya. During the summer of 1783, he portrays Charles III younger’s brother, Prince D. Luis, family in Arenas de San Pedro , in Avila, serving that to make their way in court. It also builds their contact with great noble houses, as the Dukes of Osuna or those of Medinaceli, which began to take photographs or make scenes to decorate their palaces. 0:04:07
Charles IV succeeded his father in December 1788. The relationship between Goya and the new king will be very close, being named Artist of the Chamber in April 1789. This designation marks the triumph of the artist and most of the Madrid court goes through his studio for their portraits to take pictures, for which he charges high prices. During 1792, the painter falls ill; the condition is unknown, but it will leave Goya deaf for the rest of his days. It happened in Seville and Cadiz and in Andalusia, he will be recovering for six months. This disease will cause him a much more acidic character and his genius will be strengthened. The soft and flattering style that so far has characterized Goya’s paintings will lead to a new way of working. Upon the death of his brother-in-law, Francisco Goya Bayeu, in 1795, he occupies the post of Director of Painting at the Academy of San Fernando, which is an important recognition. That same year, he began the relationship with the Duke of Alba, especially with Doña Cayetana, whose beauty and personality will captivate the artist. When she widowed, she retired to Sanlúcar de Barrameda and was joined by Goya, carrying out several notebooks of drawings in which the Duchess is in compromising scenes. From this relationship arises the hypothesis that Doña Cayetana was the protagonist of the famous painting by Goya: "The Nude Maja". In those dates of the 1790s, Goya also takes part in the development of the Caprichos, starring Doña Cayetana some of them. In these engravings, Goya criticizes the society of his time in a sour and heartless way, expressing his Enlightenment ideology. In 1798, the artist made what is called Madrid's Sistine Chapel, the frescoes of San Antonio de la Florida, representing the people of Madrid, located behind a railing, witnessing a miracle. Goya uses a style that anticipates Impressionism because of the way of working and expressionism by the gestures of his characters. Goya is at the crest of the wave and his fame as a portraitist is strengthened, making him the true number one. All the nobility and many of the wealthy middle class want to pose for the master, letting him to amass a small fortune which allows him a few luxuries. Contact with the Kings is growing up to the point he paints Charles IV’s family, in which Goya's genius has captured the royal family as it was, without flattery or embellishments. The Countess of Chinchón will be another fantastic portrait from 1800, showing a delicate young woman for whom Goya felt a special attraction. The first years of the nineteenth century were calm for Goya, working on the portraits of the most noble Spanish families, but noticing with expectation how political events unfold. The outbreak of the War of Independence in May 1808 represents a serious internal conflict for the painter, as his liberal ideology put him on the French and Joseph I side, while his patriotism is attracted to those who are fighting against the French. 0:07:46
This internal debate is reflected in his painting, which is sadder and darker. His style becomes flooder and primer, as shown by the Colossus or the still life painted at this time. One of the key works of this time is the series of engravings titled The Disasters of War series that can be considered temporaries, because it shows the atrocities that involves a war and the suffering of the people who suffer from it, shouting for Goya a cry against all forms of war or torture. At the end of the war, he painted his famous pictures about the Two and Three of May of 1808, in which directly relates the origin of the recent conflict with Napoleonic France, turning the viewer into a protagonist of such heinous events. The relationship between Fernando VII and the artist is not very smooth; they don’t like each other. The Madrid court like retailers and detailed portraits that Goya does not provide, using a fluit and prime brush. This will lead to his replacement as fashionable painter for the Valencian Vicente López. Goya began a period of isolation and bitterness, with successive illnesses that make him require to retreat to the Quinta del Sordo. In that farm, on the suburbs of Madrid, he made his supreme work: the famous Black Paintings, work where he allowed himself to collect his fears, his fantasies, his madness. On the fifth, he is accompanied by his housekeeper, Mrs. Leocadia Zorrilla Weis, with whom he had a daughter, Rosario. This almost surreal theme will be continued in one of his series of engravings: the absurdities, a set of prints populated by a diversity of characters in curious attitudes. Goya is tired of absolutism imposed by Ferdinand VII in Spain and in 1824, moved to France, in theory to the spa waters Plombières, but in practice to Bordeaux, where all his exiled liberal friends exiled were concentrated. Although he traveled to Madrid on several occasions, he spent his last years in Bordeaux, where he painted his later works, where he anticipates Impressionism. Also at this time, he made his last series of engravings, the Bulls of Bordeaux, four sheets related to an earlier series of bullfighting, The Bullfighting. revealing the painter's devotion to the national party. Goya died in Bordeaux on the night of the 15th to the 16th of April of 1828 at the age of 82. His remains rest since 1919 under his frescoes at the hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida, in Madrid, except for his head, since it seems that the artist gave it to a doctor for examination. With his death, a real artist is lost, an artist who transmitted in an insuperable way the idiosyncrasies of Spanish society, From a time as attractive as unknown, the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, his style was not continued, but it will be admired by the young French artists who, with Impressionism, will break the rules of the game of traditional painting.