Goya: Visions Of Flesh And Blood 2015

Like his predecessor Velazquez and successor Picasso, Francisco Goya is one of the most celebrated Spanish painters of all time. For many years, he painted portraits for royalty and the nobility, Goya eventually became a court painter to the Spanish crown and was appointed Director of the Royal Academy. He used a variety of styles in his portraits, which captures his subjects' personalities, emotions and essences in a realistic and naturalistic manner, and his treatment of light came to influence Impressionist painters. In addition to portraiture, Goya also mastered a wide variety of subject matters from the lives of the aristocracy to the "Disasters of War" etchings and the "Black Paintings" series, which revealed a vital chapter in history with their depictions of the horror, absurdity, ugliness, cruelty and hellishness of war for ordinary people in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars. These paintings captured the very soul of humanity while serving as a powerful indictment of the social morass of their time. Later in his life, when he had lost his sense of hearing completely, Goya, at the request of f King Carlos IV, painted frescoes for the dome at the San Antonio de la Florida Chapel in Madrid, which the chapel is now best known for, in addition to being the final resting place for the master painter.