Francisco Goya | Drawing

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of late 18th and early 19th centuries and throughout his long career was a commentator and chronicler of his era.

Immensely successful in his lifetime, Goya is often referred to as both the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

During his eighty-two years of life, Francisco José Goya y Lucientes drew and painted for about seventy, etched for some fifty, and made lithographs for five or ten.

Each mode of expression carried his fame differently to different countries.

In Spain his paintings made him widely known before he was forty, while his etchings fell flat.

When he was seventy-nine some of his prints were copied in Paris, and his big lithographs were admired there shortly after his death in 1828.

His drawings have been the revelation of the last half-century. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Durante i suoi ottantadue anni di vita, Francisco José Goya y Lucientes disegnò e dipinse per circa settanta, incise per circa cinquanta e realizzò litografie per cinque o dieci.

Ogni modalità espressiva portò la sua fama in modo diverso nei diversi paesi.

In Spagna i suoi dipinti lo resero ampiamente noto prima dei quarant'anni, mentre le sue incisioni all'acquaforte caddero nel vuoto.

Quando aveva settantanove anni alcune delle sue stampe furono copiate a Parigi e le sue grandi litografie furono ammirate lì poco dopo la sua morte nel 1828.

I suoi disegni sono stati la rivelazione dell'ultimo mezzo secolo. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art