Goya in the museum
The museum displays 14 paintings, one drawing and the five grand series that Goya engraved. The chronology of these works by Goya, ranging from his youth in Zaragoza (1762-1774) to his time in Bordeaux, where he died in 1828, makes this museum one of the leading centres of knowledge about the work of the painter from Fuendetodos.
Goya’s pictorial production is superbly represented in the museum. It displays nine paintings owned by Ibercaja and six belonging to the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País. Varied in format and spaced out in time, there are works from his youth, some from the 1770s and others from the mid-1810s. Religiously themed paintings are represented, along with portraits, several pieces of very high pictorial value and some flights of whimsy.
Together with Dürer and Rembrandt, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes is a key figure in the art of engraving. His graphic production was broad and highly varied and reflected in several series of etchings, the most prominent of which were Caprichos (1799), The Disasters of War (1810-1814; published in 1863), Tauromaquia (1816) and Disparates or Proverbs (1816-1824; published in 1864). Each and every one was a milestone in Goya’s process of graphic investigation and creation, which would culminate in the lithographies of The Bulls of Bordeaux (1825), finished when he was 79 years old. This final series demonstrated his capacity for lifelong learning and his sense of modernity.
The second floor displays the painting of Goya and his times, with works by some of the most significant painters who lived and found success in it and influenced him or were his rivals in the artistic atmosphere of the the Spanish Court or the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, from Giaquinto and Mengs to his brother-in-law and teacher Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maella.
Francisco de Goya was born on 30 March 1746 in Fuendetodos (Zaragoza) and had ties to Aragon since childhood. In Zaragoza, Goya began his education at the Escuelas Pías school and was trained in the craft of painting, first in Luzán’s workshop and then with his brother-in-law Francisco Bayeu. His first paintings, which he finished between 1760 and 1781, are conserved in Aragon, along with other works created at various times and with different techniques.