Francisco Goya, Madrid
This monument is a tribute to Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, the great Spanish romantic painter. It depicts Goya seated with a paintbrush in his right hand and a palette in his left. It is close to the well known church Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, away from the main tourist circuit in Madrid, Spain.
Born in Fuendetodos, Spain in 1746 he moved to Madrid to become one of the Court sartists, after which he studied at the Academy of Parma in Italy. Goya painted society as it was in his time ranging from the sweetness of children and the sensuality of the Majas, to the horror of monsters and the violence of the bull-fights.
He is known as one of the greatest portrait painters, and his work can divided into two periods, The first is characterized by joy and light and the second, after a severe illness that left him deaf and in a state of depression and delirium, that filled with horror and ghosts
King Ferdinand VII is said to have told him, ‘You deserve to be garrotted, but you are a great artist so we forgive you.’
He enjoyed great success as a court painter, however he withdrew from public life in his later years, dogged by his increasing deafness and fear of madness. When the political climate in Spain became too unstable, he exiled himself to Bordeaux, where he died in 1828.
