Goya
Year of lecture: 1963
Abstract:
"During the eighteenth century the Spanish Colonial Empire lost ground rapidly to France and England, and the Spanish Monarchy, unlike many European monarchies, did not respond to the ideas of the Enlightenment. But eighteenth century Spain inherited a great tradition of painting from such masters as El Greco (Fear in the House of Simon), Velasquez (Pope Innocent X), Zurbaran (St Jerome) and Murillo. It was a painterly tradition, and it was this painterly tradition which Francisco Goya inherited. In his work, the painterly fluency of the Baroque, the Rococo and of the Venetians, survived the neo-classical attack upon painterly painting. Goya has often been called the last of the old masters and the first of the new."
