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| Francisco Goya Self-portrait in the workshop ca.1790-95 oil on canvas Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid |
Quoted passages below are from Written Lives by Javier Marías, translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (New Directions, 2006)
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of Mariano Goya, the artist's grandson 1812-14 oil on panel Collection Duque de Albuquerque, Madrid |
Vladimir Nabokov - "He got annoyed with people who praised art that was 'sincere and simple' or who believed that the quality of art depended on its simplicity and sincerity. For him, everything was artifice, including the most authentic and deeply felt emotions, to which he himself was not immune."
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of the Countess of Chinchón 1797-1800 oil on canvas Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of Dona Narcisa Baranana de Goicoechea ca. 1810 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of Antonia Zárate ca. 1805 oil on canvas National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin |
Isak Dinesen - "There is no mystery in art. Do the things you can see, they will show you what you cannot see."
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| Francisco Goya Portrait of a Lady with a Fan 1806-07 oil on canvas Louvre |
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| Francisco Goya La Tirana 1799 oil on canvas Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid |
Djuna Barnes - "I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further, and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not vanished."
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| Francisco Goya Cardinal Luís María de Borbón y Vallabriga 1790s oil on canvas Museu de Arte, São Paulo |
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| Francisco Goya Les Jeunes 1812-14 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille |
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| Francisco Goya Yard of a Madhouse 1794 oil on tinplate Meadows Museum, Dallas |
Oscar Wilde - "Later, he seemed to take these words literally, after leaving the prison in which he had spent two years doing hard labor. Although it was clear that if he wrote a new comedy or novel, money would rain down on him and his poverty would be at an end, he had neither the strength nor the will to write. As he put it, he had known suffering and could not sing its praises; he hated it, but he had known it, and that was why he could not now sing the praises of what had always hitherto inspired him : pleasure and joy."
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| Francisco Goya Prison Scene 1810-14 oil on zinc Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Durham |
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| Francisco Goya Miracle of St Anthony 1798 ceiling fresco San Antonio de la Florida, Madrid |
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| Francisco Goya Second of May, 1808 - The Charge of the Mamelukes 1814 oil on canvas Prado |
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| Francisco Goya Allegory of the City of Madrid 1810 oil on canvas Museo Municipal, Madrid |
Thomas Mann - "The sad thing is that he really believed that he did not take himself seriously, when what leaps out at you, from novels, essays, letters and diaries alike, is his utter belief in his own immortality."
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| Francisco Goya Duchess of Alba arranging her hair 1796-97 drawing Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid |