Original subtitles

Francisco Goya has often been described as the last of the great old masters and the first of

the new. He painted sublime portraits of the Spanish royal court and celebratory pictures

of the good life in Spain, but he also produced some of the most harrowing images of human

cruelty ever created. His work is a compelling mixture of public documentation and private

nightmare. It can also make the stomach churn in its uncompromising bleakness and power. Not much

is known of Goya's early life as a painter, but he seems to have followed a fairly conventional path.

The son of a master Gilda, Goya was born on the 30th of March 1746 in Fuendantodos, a small

provincial village in central Spain. He began his artistic studies at the age of 13 with

the local artist José Luzán in nearby Zaragoza. In time-honoured fashion, he travelled to Italy

in 1770 to acquaint himself with the old masters and classical antiquity. And on his return to Spain,

he got his first commission to paint a vault in the El Pilar Cathedral in Zaragoza. Adoration of the name of

God, painted in 1772 when Goya was just 26, is clearly influenced by the Baroque style he'd seen on

his travels, with angels supported by billowing clouds surrounding the name of God, here written

in a triangle to symbolise the Trinity in Hebrew. In 1773, at the age of 27, Goya married Josefa Bayou,

sister of Francisco Bayou, then a rising star at the Spanish royal court, and he was to help Goya in

the coming years. But Goya's marriage was plagued with tragedy. Of the eight children that he had,

only one, Javier, would survive into adulthood. Professionally though, Goya's horizons were about

to expand. At the beginning of 1775, with Goya approaching his 29th birthday, he came to the city

that would define him as an artist, Madrid. The city was undergoing a transformation under King

Charles III. Many artists were attracted to the city, and with the extensive building and city

planning in progress, Madrid was fast becoming a picturesque city of international stature.

Within a year of arriving in Madrid, Goya produced a series of paintings of which this is among the most

celebrated. It's called The Picnic, and it shows an idyllic scene on the banks of the river Manzanaris,

just outside Madrid, where a group of characters are indulging in an afternoon's frolicking.

And it also shows two social types, Mayos and Mayas. They're from the lower classes,

they're artisans, sometimes they're on the verge of criminality, but they're free spirits.

As you can see, flagons of wine have been consumed, they've eaten, and then they're lounging around in

the sun, flirting as pudding arrives, in the form of this figure, the orange seller, who shows a wares,

but at the same time, flirts and gestures off into the distance, as if to say to one of the men,

come with me if you want. But the whole purpose of this painting isn't just an idyllic celebration,

nor is it to show Goya's amazing facility as a young artist. This painting had another purpose.

In fact, it was a cartoon, or a study, for a tapestry.

In the 18th century, the tapestry was immensely prized by Spanish aristocrats,

who not only used it for decoration, but looked to it as denoting social status and wealth.

Goya got the job at the Royal Tapestry Manufactory on the recommendation of his brother-in-law,

Francisco Bayeux. Here, Goya and other artists produced the designs that would be copied onto the

manufacturing looms. The images tended to be portraits of country life, of sport and other

innocent rustic pursuits. But it wasn't long before Goya started to introduce an edgier note into his work.

In this picture, called The Blind Guitarist, the grotesquely painted figure of the musician

begins to play in front of a group of well-to-do folk out for their stroll. In contrast to the shadowy

figure of the musician, a man in a dazzling yellow coat reaches into his pocket for a coin with which

to fob off the busker. But he can't be so easily brushed aside, and nor will he disappear from Goya's

future work, where there develops a contrast of light and dark, of the frivolous and the more sinister

side of human life. But there's also a growing ambition and scale in Goya's work, evident in

this tapestry design created in 1788. It's called the Meadow of San Isidro, and shows the city of

Madrid celebrating the feast of its patron saint. Goya described the work as his most arduous challenge

to date, a painting of some seven and a half meters in length, showing feasting, frolicking figures on the

banks of the Manzanares River, with the city visible in the distance. The design, though, never made it

into a tapestry, due to the death of the king, for whose palace it was intended. Instead, it was bought

by the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. With his election to the Royal Academy in Madrid in 1880, Goya was able

to find the support of aristocrats such as these. And this portrait of the Osuna family, painted in 1789,

is typical of the many that Goya did throughout his career, showing the wealthy patrons in all their finery.

Goya had rapidly become the painter of Spanish society, the most sought-after portraitist in the

city and beyond. But privately, he was having doubts about his success, fearful of the fact that he may

have been merely selling out to the market. And then, in 1792, whilst travelling to Andalusia to visit

friends, Goya became seriously ill. The exact nature of his illness isn't known, but it lasted several

months and left him profoundly deaf for the rest of his life. Whilst he was recuperating from his illness,

Goya began to work in a much more radical and experimental way. In a series of 14 small paintings,

made on tin, and which he referred to as his cabinet pictures, Goya wrestled with the unpredictability

of human existence, where life can be snuffed out at any moment, and where sanity and reason can easily

descend into a pit of madness.

But if the cabinet paintings seemed powerful arenas in which Goya's imagination began to run riot,

they were nothing in comparison to his first great graphic series, produced through the 1790s and

finally published in 1799, 80 images called Los Capricios. Los Capricios, or the Caprices, is a

kaleidoscope of human delusion and weakness. Here, Goya rips into the world around him. The vanity,

pomposity and stupidity of Spanish society. No one would escape from his savagely satirical gaze.

Fluctuating between the natural and the unnatural, Goya produced a collection of images,

the like of which had never been seen before. Not surprisingly, the public response to Los Capricios

ranged from incomprehension to outrage. And from the first edition of 300, Goya sold less than 60 sets.

Later, as an old man, he said he withdrew it from public sale because he feared the Spanish Inquisition.

However, the work was to fuel much of the best and darkest work for the rest of his life.

Goya still needed to earn a living, though, and returned to painting large-scale portraits.

The Duchess of Alba was one of the most compelling women in Spain, and she became Goya's most famous model and his passionate love.

Here, the Duchess is clad in the costume of the Maya, a dress which had become fashionable with the aristocracy at that time.

And inscribed on her two rings are their names, Alba and Goya, which points down to a feat,

with which she seems to have written in the sand, solo Goya, only Goya.

But whether Goya's infatuation with the Duchess was ever reciprocated is unknown.

The Duchess of Alba was instrumental in making this particular part of Madrid a fashionable one,

because she bought land here on the banks of the River Manzanares, and this church, that of Santonio de la Florida,

became the core church, and in the summer of 1798, Goya was given the job of decorating the ceiling.

The commission itself was a relatively traditional one, but Goya's response was anything but.

The subject is that of the 13th century legend of St Anthony of Padua, who appeared during a court hearing

in his native city of Lisbon in order to save his father, who'd been unjustly accused of murder.

At the saint's bidding, the dead man came back to life to accuse the real murderer,

but the main action seems almost overshadowed by the surrounding crowd,

a motley crew of vagabonds and blind beggars.

Hardly the normal depiction of floating angels that we normally find in Baroque church frescoes.

In spite of the grotesque nature of some of the San Antonio murals, and indeed of the Capriccios,

Goya's reputation in royal circles was never higher, and in 1799 he was appointed principal court painter,

and a year later, in 1800, he was commissioned to paint what became perhaps the greatest royal group

portrait of the 19th century. It shows King Charles IV and his extended family 14 almost life-sized figures,

but are each individuals in their own right. And in the way that Goya paints, the decorations,

the sashes, the silk and brocade shimmer of the dresses, is a kind of miracle in itself. As you get close up, though,

those details dissolve into a miasma of brushstrokes, and the message seems to be,

keep your distance, which reaffirms, if you like, the royal dignity or authority.

At the heart of the painting is the Queen, Mary Louisa, who forms this pivot as a kind of triangle,

with her husband, King Charles, and then her son, the Crown Prince Ferdinand.

And all the other figures are really there just as bit part players.

People have looked at this work and tried to read into it the idea that Goya may be caricaturing the

family. This, I think, is wrong. It's also slightly unfair. The Bourbons were notoriously ugly,

and people have pointed out in particular that the Queen is no oil painting, to use the cliche.

But in fact, I find this image rather tender. But what gives the painting its real edge is the

presence of Goya, on the left-hand side, depicting himself in the act of painting the picture. And,

of course, this is a direct homage to the greatest royal group portrait ever made,

by Velázquez, Goya's great rival, if you like. What emerges from this picture is the

idea that Goya is a schizophrenic artist of kind, that there are two sides to him,

that he has this light side, the side that is the traditional and official court painter.

But also, he has this private, introspective, in-prison side, the dark side. And it's this dark,

dangerous, sometimes erotic, sometimes political vision that dominates the second half of Goya's career.

This is one of the most famous pairs of paintings in the history of art, the first of two celebrated

pictorial double acts that Goya did at the beginning of the 19th century. And it shows a woman in exactly

the same pose, one clothed, the other naked. Art historians locate this work somewhere between

Titian's Venus of Urbino and Manet's Olympia. But it's probably closer to the truth to say that Goya was

more inspired by Velázquez's great image of the Roqueby Venus, owned by the Spanish Prime Minister

of Goya's day, Manuel Goodoy, who it's widely believed commissioned these works from Goya.

She looks at us unflinchingly as we look at her. And that draws people into the picture,

and to wonder who this woman might be. And some said it was the Duchess of Alba,

but it's clearly not her. And others have speculated it might have been Goodoy's mistress.

But I think the best way of reading the work is as an embodiment of a modern and increasingly

liberated Spanish woman. The picture after all is called the naked Maya, the artisan with a liberal

free spirit. And I think it's that that Goya's getting at, as she lies openly displaying her body

with no hint of shame whatsoever. In the dressed version, her body's hidden, but her sexuality

becomes more emphasised. You see the curves in more pronounced ways. Also, the costume is Turkish,

those golden slippers. And there's a kind of exoticism to the work. Images of reclining nude women

have a long and distinguished history in art, but not in Spain when the Inquisition is raging. In fact,

King Charles III wanted to burn all the images of nude women in the royal collection.

Now there's been some very interesting speculation about how these two works would have been displayed

in Goodoy's collection. Some people have come up with the theory that there was even a kind of

mechanical device that had dress woman, and then it flips up to reveal the undressed woman underneath,

rather like those pens that adolescents have, that when you turn, the woman's clothes slowly fall off.

I'm not sure that that happened, but I do think that having a dressed image next to an undressed image

gives a more erotic frisson, even though the implication was that by covering her up, you added respectability.

And it was Goodoy, painted here by Goya in 1801, who put into motion events that would throw Spain

into turmoil and inspire Goya to create some of his greatest works. In 1808, Goodoy had given Napoleon Bonaparte

free passage through Spain on his way to Portugal, effectively delivering his country into French hands.

Napoleon forced the king to abdicate and put his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne.

Revolt soon broke out throughout the country, and a brutal guerrilla war began.

The war didn't just take place on battlefields, it took place in the towns and cities of Spain too,

where insurrection was brutally put down. And so there were newspaper reports and verbal accounts,

but also Goya would have seen some of the atrocities. And this led him to produce

what is still one of the most powerful indictments of human conflict ever made. His second great graphic

series, The Disasters of War. Goya had initially been encouraged to depict the glorious deeds of the

Spanish against the French armies, but the series of 80 prints are a total indictment of war and tyranny.

Sane and rational men become little more than savage beasts in a world where human barbarity seems endless.

There's nothing noble, Goya seems to be saying, in a struggle where the defenseless are raped, mutilated,

executed, and their corpses piled high like a garbage dump. Goya's series of etchings predate war photography

by over a century, but many still argue that their power and impact have never been equaled.

Some of the graphic horrors explored and depicted by Goya in The Disasters of War were used for the basis of

two extraordinary paintings that, in a way, are the first war or anti-war oil paintings of the modern era.

It begins with this work called The Second of May, produced by Goya in 1814,

looking back over the events that had taken place six years before.

And the image starts with a scene where the French troops are sent in to quell a growing mob riot as

the mob tries to stop the Spanish royal family from leaving Madrid and effectively leaving them open to

French rule. And in a way you'd say this is an heroic image of the heroism of the people,

but actually the central impact of the work is one of chaos and confusion. And then Goya switches gear

in this painting, where we're asked to make the narrative leap in our minds,

and here there is a tremendously harrowing frozen image of retribution, a day later and it's actually

called The Third of May, and the mobsters have been rounded up and they face a firing squad.

And you can pick out some of the major protagonists in the previous painting here in this work,

with a figure here in the foreground lying in a sticky pool of blood, clearly recognisable as the

figure in the right-hand foreground of The Second of May, stabbing a horse. And the man,

illuminated, facing the firing squad, staring unflinchingly at them, but the look of horror

on his face is also visible as the man stabbing the French soldier who seems to be suspended in

thin air in the previous painting. And then we have this amazingly anonymous machine-like firing squad,

their backs to us, partly inviting us to look over their shoulders and cast ourselves in the role of

aggressors. It's a fantastically staged but claustrophobic image, the hill pushing in on one side,

the darkness descending on another, and then this eerie glow from the lantern that illuminates the

figure and in a way gives the central image the strongest resonance. Because look at the pose of

the figure there. Arms out, look at his palms and you see blood marks, the stigmata, the Christ-like

figure, and this is an image of martyrdom. And of course what Goya is doing in these pictures is

proclaiming that this is the horrors of war writ large or painted on the largest scale that Goya can

muster. And secondly, and more politically, by 1814, for Spain, the French, and Napoleon in particular,

is cast as the Antichrist.

With the war over, Goya came under investigation for his collaboration with the French,

as he and other liberals had initially welcomed what they saw as progressive reform.

So Goya faced the Inquisition, which had been reinstated by the new despotic king, Ferdinand VII.

Although no charges were ever brought against Goya, and he managed to keep his position as a court

painter, as well as his annual salary, no further royal commissions ever came his way.

And whilst all this was going on, Goya was also struck with a personal loss. In 1812, his wife,

Josefa, died. A few years later, in 1819, now in his mid-70s, Goya bought a small house just outside

Madrid called Quinta del Sordo, or the House of the Deaf Man. There he lived with his new companion and

housekeeper, Liocadia Weiss, and her daughter. Once again, Goya became seriously ill, but on his recovery,

he started to paint a series of works directly onto the walls of two rooms in the house, which are known to

us today as the black paintings. This painting seems to have been dug from the depths of Goya's

Gothic imagination, but it also has its precedence in classical mythology and in the art of the more

recent past. But here, in Goya's hands, the thing is much more monstrous. The story goes that Saturn was

told by Mother Earth that his children would eventually usurp him, and so he bites the heads

off each and every one of them to kill them as an act of kind of self-preservation. But here,

the image that Goya gives us isn't of a god in control. In fact, he's lost the plot. He's unbalanced

and unhinged. And when the work was first painted on the wall of the House of the Deaf Man, it sported a

full erection, an horrendous image of sexual gratification, where Saturn is presented as

life-giver as well as life-taker. But either through censorship or when the works were transferred

onto canvas and then brought here to the Prado, that was lost. And what we have with this god of

melancholy is a dark, brooding, horrific scene that perhaps mirrors something of the pessimism

and sense of imprisonment that Goya himself is feeling.

Here, Goya returns to a scene that he'd painted some 32 years earlier,

that of San Isidro. But the happy picnickers are now replaced by something much gloomier.

The pilgrims cluster together, their mouths gaping wide open on their distorted faces as they try to

sing. And suddenly, individual rational beings seem lost in a seething, irrational mass of humanity.

With Spain still in ongoing political turmoil, Goya decided to go into exile. He petitioned the king for

permission to visit France for reasons of health, and it was given. And so Goya headed to Bordeaux.

And it was while he was living in Bordeaux that Goya produced his last major oil painting,

this one, called The Milkmaid of Bordeaux, showing a doughy-eyed, slightly melancholic woman,

staring off into space with a milk churn on the left-hand side of the picture, on which Goya has

scratched his name as an artist of 81. And some people have interpreted this work as a sign that

in his old age, he's increasingly experimental. And to a certain extent, he was. And they say that this

work, in its brushstrokes, in its looseness, in this hazy impressionism, anticipates the works of

French artists later on in the century. But I think perhaps that's overstating the case. For me,

the strongest feeling that you get from this work is nostalgia, but also of a man who's found some

kind of peace, harmony and resolution in his life. When I look at it, I'm reminded of the young

man who came to Madrid, who made those studies or cartoons for the tapestries of frolics and picnics.

And here, if you like, the careers come full circle. A year after completing the milkmaid,

Goya died in Bordeaux on the 16th of April, 1828. He was 82. But in 1901, his body was returned to Spain

and buried in the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid, the very church where a century

earlier he'd painted his frescoes. Goya's a pivotal figure in the history of art, an artist who

reinvigorated traditional portraiture and religious devotional imagery. But ultimately, it was Goya's

unflinching vision that set him apart from almost any other painter in history. That searing, uncompromising

gaze that enabled him to see and depict human frailty with an unprecedented directness and power,

which arguably has never yet been surpassed.