Length1h 19m
About this audiobook
Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The entrance to his world is not barricaded with technical difficulties. He proved that if a man has the capacity to live and multiply his experiences, to fight and work, he can produce great art without classical decorum and traditional respectability. He was born in 1746, in Fuendetodos, a small mountain village of a hundred inhabitants. As a child he worked in the fields with his two brothers and his sister until his talent for drawing put an end to his misery. At fourteen, supported by a wealthy patron, he went to Saragossa to study with a court painter and later, when he was nineteen, on to Madrid. Up to his thirty-seventh year, if we leave out of account the tapestry cartoons of unheralded decorative quality and five small pictures, Goya painted nothing of any significance, but once in control of his refractory powers, he produced masterpieces with the speed of Rubens. His court appointment was followed by a decade of incessant activity – years of painting and scandal, with intervals of bad health. Goya’s etchings demonstrate a draughtsmanship of the first rank. In paint, like Velázquez, he is more or less dependent on the model, but not in the detached fashion of the expert in still-life. If a woman was ugly, he made her a despicable horror; if she was alluring, he dramatised her charm. He preferred to finish his portraits at one sitting and was a tyrant with his models. Like Velázquez, he concentrated on faces, but he drew his heads cunningly, and constructed them out of tones of transparent greys. Monstrous forms inhabit his black-and-white world: these are his most profoundly deliberated productions. His fantastic figures, as he called them, fill us with a sense of ignoble joy, aggravate our devilish instincts and delight us with the uncharitable ecstasies of destruction. His genius attained its highest point in his etchings on the horrors of war. When placed beside the work of Goya, other pictures of war pale into sentimental studies of cruelty. He avoided the scattered action of the battlefield, and confined himself to isolated scenes of butchery. Nowhere else did he display such mastery of form and movement, such dramatic gestures and appalling effects of light and darkness. In all directions Goya renewed and innovated.
Audiobook details
GenreOther
Length1 hr 19 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
3534. The Parasol, 1777.
21. Self-portrait, 1773-74.
3635. Summer (Harvesting), 1786-87.
32. Portrait of Martin Zapater, 1797.
3736. Spring (The Flowergirls), 1786-87.
43. Farnese Hercules,
3837. Autumn (The Vintage), 1786-87.
54. Self-portrait, 1815.
3938. Winter (The Snow Tempest), 1786-87.
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65. Portrait of Josefa Bayeu (?), about 1798.
4039. La Gallina Ciega (Blind Man's Buff), 1788-89.
76. Prince Balthasar Carlos, 1778.
4140. The Meadow of San Isidro, 1788.
87. Self-portrait in the Studio, 1793-95.
4241. The Wedding, 1791-1792.
98. Portrait of Charles III in Hunting Costume, 1787.
4342. Las Gigantillas (Little Giants), 1791-92.
109. The Family of the Infante Don Luis, 1784.
4443. The Swing, 1787.
1110. Portrait of the Count of Floridablanca and Goya, 1784.
4544. Highwaymen Attacking a Coach, 1787.
1211. Charles IV, 1789.
4645. Nude Maja, 1798-1805.
1312. Maria Luisa, 1789.
4746. Clothed Maja, 1798-1805.
1413. The Family of Charles IV, 1800-01.
4847. Marquise of Santa Cruz, 1805.
1514. The Countess of Chinchón, 1800.
4948. Wounded Mason, 1786-87.
1615. Half Don Manuel Godoy as Commander in the 'War of the Oranges', about 1801.
5049. Milkgirl from Bordeaux, 1825-27.
1716. Ferdinand VII, 1814.
5150. El Maragato Points A Gun on Friar Pedro, about 1806-07.
1817. Countess-Duchess of Benavente, 1785.
5251. Friar playing the guitar, from ‘Album H”, 1824-28,
1918. Duchess of Alba, 1797.
5352. Use of a pulley, ‘Album F56’,
2019. Dona Isabel de Porcel, 1804-05.
5453. Inquisition Scene, 1812-19.
2120. Adoration of the Name of God by Angels, 1772.
5554. Los desastres de la guerra (Disasters of War), 1810-20.
2221. Betrothal of the Virgin, 1774.
5655. The Colossus, about 1808-12.
2322. St Bernardine of Siena preaching before Alfonso V of Aragon, 1781-83.
5756. Cannibals Gazing At Their Victims, about 1800-08.
2423. Mary, Queen of Martyrs, 1780-81.
5857. Second of May, 1808, 1814.
2524. Miracle of St Anthony of Padua, 1798.
5958. Third of May, 1808, 1814.
2625. The Crucifixion, 1780.
6059. Corral de Locos (Yard with Lunatics), 1793-94.
2726. Saints Justa and Rufina, 1817.
6160. L'Aquelarre (The Witches' Sabbath), 1797-98.
2827. Last Communion of St Joseph of Calasanz, 1819.
6261. Saturn Devouring His Children, 1820-23.
2928. Agony in the Garden, 1819.
63Biography
3029. La Tauromaquia (The Art of Bullfighting), 1816.
6462. Pilgrimage to San Isidro, 1820-23.
3130. The Bullfight, 1812-19.
6563. The Dog, 1820-23.
3231. Dancing by the River Manzanares, 1777.
6664. Fantastic Vision or Asmodea, 1820-23.
3332. Hunter loading his gun, 1812-23.
6765. Promenade of the Holy Office, 1821-23.
3433. The Picnic, 1776.
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