From The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes.
Born in Fuendetodos, he later moved with his parents to Saragossa and, at age fourteen, began studying with the painter José Luzán Martínez (1710-1785).
In 1746, the year of Goya’s birth, the Spanish crown was under the rule of Ferdinand VI.
Subsequently, the Bourbon king Charles III (r. 1759-88) ruled the country as an enlightened monarch sympathetic to change, employing ministers who supported radical economic, industrial, and agricultural reform. Goya came to artistic maturity during this age of enlightenment.