1746-1828 Goya is considered the 18th Century's foremost painter and etcher of Spanish culture, known for his realistic scenes of battles, bullfights and human corruption. Goya lived during a time of upheaval in Spain that included war with France, the Inquisition, the rule of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and, finally, the reign of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. Experts proclaim these events -- and Goya's deafness as a result of an illness in 1793 -- as central to understanding Goya's work, which frequently depicts human misery in a satiric and sometimes nightmarish fashion. From the 1770s he was a royal court painter for Charles III and Charles IV, and when Bonaparte took the throne in 1809, Goya swore fealty to the new king. When the crown was restored to Spain's Ferdinand VII (1814), Goya, in spite of his earlier allegiance to the French king, was reinstated as royal painter. After 1824 he lived in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux until his death, reportedly because of political differences with Ferdinand. Over his long career he created hundreds of paintings, etchings, and lithographs, among them Maya Clothed and Maya Nude (1798-1800); Caprichos (1799-82); The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 (1814); Disasters of War (1810-20); and The Black Paintings (1820-23).   Related Paintings of Francisco Goya :. | The Wedding | Crockery Vendor | saturn | Madre infeliz | Manuel Osorio de Zuniga |
Related Artists:
SWANEVELT, Herman van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1600-1655 Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher, active in France and Italy. His first signed and dated works are two views of Paris dated 1623 (Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.). He was in Rome from 1629 to 1641. His earliest dated painting there is an Old Testament Scene (1630; The Hague, Mus. Bredius; see fig.), a compositional formula that he often used, with some variations, in Rome. A flat, low foreground is closed on the left by a house and a tree; on the right is a distant hilly scene; and groups of figures are disposed horizontally. This design, derived from Cornelis van Poelenburch, is well suited to van Swanevelt's many landscapes with biblical and mythological subjects. The large tree extending beyond the frame gives a monumental touch to the composition.
Brun, Charles Le
French Baroque Era Painter, 1619-1690 French painter and designer. He dominated 17th-century French painting as no other artist; it was not until over a century later, during the predominance of Jacques-Louis David, that artistic authority was again so concentrated in one man. Under the protection of a succession of important political figures, including Chancellor Pierre S?guier, Cardinal Richelieu and Nicolas Fouquet, Le Brun created a series of masterpieces of history and religious painting. For Louis XIV and his chief minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert he executed his greatest work, the royal palace of Versailles: an almost perfect ensemble of architecture, decoration and landscape. After Colbert's death in 1683, he was no longer able to count on prestigious commissions
Giovanni Migliara
Italian 1785-1837 He began his career as a scene painter with Gaspare Galiari (1761-1823) in Milan, working at the Teatro Carcano in 1804 and at La Scala from 1805 to 1809. Owing to illness, after 1810 he turned to small-scale works in watercolour or oil using various supports, including silk and ivory. At this date Milanese painting was dominated by Andrea Appiani and Luigi Sabatelli, both leading Neo-classical artists. However, Migliara remained aloof from this dominant movement and instead drew on medieval and historical subjects with Romantic undertones. His precise, jewel-like technique and choice of subject-matter found favour with aristocratic patrons in Milan. His figures are generally stilted and burdened by their costumes, though the crowd in Sacking of Minister Prina's House (1814; Milan, Gal. A. Mod.) is depicted with unusual fluency. In 1822 Migliara was appointed Professor of Perspective at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan, and in 1833 he was nominated painter to the court of Charles-Albert, King of Sardinia (reg 1831-49). More typical of his historical scenes is Entrance to the Castle of Plessis de la Tour (Turin, Gal. Civ. A. Mod.), which was exhibited at the Brera in 1833. He also produced many topographically precise pictures of church interiors in which he combined his training as a scene painter with his knowledge of intaglio techniques.