Francisco Goya and his illness

Francisco Josè de goya y lucientes (Fig. 1) was a painter endowed with a great expressive capacity. his work, which was carried out between the end of the Seventeenth and the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, covered a period of more than 60 years, with a massive production, a wide range of subjects and numerous techniques, clearly eclectic. oil paintings, etchings, drawings, lithographs were produced with such intensity which would appear not to have ever completely satisfied the artist’s ambitions. goya’s works would appear to have been produced in two periods: the first, in which the artist was proving his value, a period which included the tapestries and portraits: the second, that devoted to expressive liberty, which is characterised by a varied production of Works of Art ranging from Caprichos to the Majas, the Disasters of War, Black paintings to the Bull fights. This second period – according to the opinion of the critics – shows the signs of his severe illness, perhaps syphilis with which he had been affected in his youth and which had led to complete deafness, after an acute onset which began when he was 46 years old. goya’s art ranges from Baroque to the romantic movement, of which goya can be considered the first of the great Masters; others were inspired by goya, amongst whom, Manet and Picasso. A pioneer in new artistic tendencies and new expressive forms, he can be considered the father of modern art.