Francisco Goya was a Spanish painter, born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, a village in Aragon, and dead in 1828 in Bordeaux, in exile. The son of a craftsman, he rose to become First Court Painter of Spain, then lost his hearing and turned to witches, war and madness.
His most famous image, Saturn Devouring His Son, shows a wild-eyed god biting into the body of his own child. It is one of fourteen murals he put straight onto the plaster of his own home.
For thirty years he had worked to order for the court: portraits of the royal family, and designs for tapestries full of picnics and flirtations. In his seventies he shut himself away in a country house outside Madrid and covered its walls with scenes like this one, for no one but himself.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (140+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
That ending was far from where he started. Fuendetodos stands in the dry hills of Aragon, in northeastern Spain. Goya's father was a gilder, who laid gold leaf on altarpieces and picture frames, and the family soon moved to Zaragoza, the capital of the region.
From 1759 to 1763 the boy was apprenticed in Zaragoza to the painter José Luzán. Then, like every ambitious young artist in Spain, he set his sights on Madrid, the seat of the king.
Madrid says no
In Madrid, a career began at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, the school that trained artists for the crown and ranked them in competitions. Twice the young man from Zaragoza came before its jury.
What You'll Discover
Who gave him no votes.
What struck him down in Andalusia.
Why he pulled his prints from sale.
What he drew and never printed.
Who was summoned over a nude.
What he painted on his own walls.