Francisco Goya

"I tell you that I have nothing more to wish for. They were extremely pleased with my pictures, and expressed great satisfaction not only the King, but the Prince as well. Neither I nor my works deserve such recognition."

"But now? well now, now I have no fear of Witches, goblins, ghosts, thugs, Giants, ghouls, scallywags, etc, nor any sort of body."

"As I am working for the public, I must continue to amuse them."

"I have had luck with my St. Bernardino, not only with the experts, but with the public as well. Without any reservation, everyone is on my side. The King expressed his satisfaction before the whole Court."

"Beloved soulmate.. ..you'll kiss my ass at least seven times if I manage to convince you from the crazy happiness I got from living here [Madrid].. ..the various insects with their deadly weapons, made of needles and penknives, which, if you don't look out and even if you do, will tear away your flesh and your hair as well.. ..and you can't find a spot far enough away from them to escape their cruelty. This infection is general in every town.."

"I am now Painter to the King with fifteen thousand reales [a year].. ..the King sent out an order to Bayeu and Maella to search out the best two painters that could be found, to paint the cartoons for tapestries. Bayeu proposed his brother, and Maella proposed me. Their advice was put before the king, and the favor was done, and I had no idea of what was happening to me."

"I have now established an enviable way of living, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me."

"I haven't heard them [n.d.r. he's talking about some Spanish popular folk songs] and probably never shall because I no longer go to the places where one could hear them, for I have got into my head that I should maintain a certain presence and air for dignity.. ..that a man should have, and you can imagine that I'm not very happy about it."

"I had established an enviable scheme of life. I refused to dance attendance in the ante-chambers of the great. If anyone wanted something from me he had to ask. I was much run after, but if the person was not of rank, or a friend, I worked [painted] for nobody."

"My position is entirely different from what the majority of the public imagine.. .I want a great deal, firstly because my position entails expenditure, and secondly because I like it. Being a very well-known man I cannot reduce my expenses as other people do. I was about to ask for an increase of salary, but the conditions are so unfavorable that I must set the idea aside."

"[that] the highly praised handsomeness of my little son had disappeared and in its place was a monstrosity completely covered with pox blisters. Can you imagine how I felt?"

"[T]here are no rules in painting and.. ..the oppression, or servile obligation, of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the Young who profess this very difficult art that approaches the divine more than any other."

"What a scandal to hear nature deprecated in comparison to Greek statues by one who knows neither one nor the other without acknowledging that the smallest part of Nature confounds and amazes those who know most. What statue or cast of it might there be that is not copied from divine nature?"

"My dear soul, I can stand on my own feet, but so poorly that I don't know if my head is on my shoulders. I have no appetite or desire to do anything at all. Only your letters cheer me up – only yours. I don't know what will become of me now that I have lost sight of you; I who idolize you have given up hope that you'll ever glance at these blurred lines and get consolation from them."

"To occupy my imagination, which has been depressed by dwelling on my misfortunes, and to compensate at least in part for some of the considerable expenses I have incurred, I set myself to painting a series of cabinet pictures.. ..they depict themes that cannot usually be dealt with in commissioned works, where 'capricho' [whim] and invention do not have much of a role to play. I thought of sending them to the academy.."

"[the painting 'Yard with Lunatics' shows] ..a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks; (it is a scene I witnessed at first hand in Zaragoza)."

"My health has not improved. Often I get so excited that I cannot bear with myself. Then again I become calm, as I am at this present moment of writing, although I am already fatigued. Next Monday, if God permit, I will go to a bull-fight, and I wish you were able to accompany me."

"The group of sorcerers who form the support for our elegant lady are more for ornament than real use. Some heads are so charged with inflammable gas that they have no need for balloons or sorcerers in order to fly away."

"The sleep of reason produces monsters."

"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos."

"Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels."

"No recognition / Nadie se conoce' [Goya wrote on this plate no. 6:] The world is a masquerade, faces, costumes, voices, everything a lie. Each person wishes to appear what he is not. The whole world deceives itself, and no one recognizes himself."

"A bride-to-be, Discreet and penitent, she presents herself to her parents in this guise."

"'One to the other / Unos á otros' - Thus goes the world. We mock at and deceive each other. He who, yesterday, was the ball, is to-day the horseman in the ring. Fortune directs the feast, and distributes the parts according to the inconstancy of its caprice."

"The author [Goya] is convinced that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so, although criticism is usually taken to be exclusively the business of literature."

"He [Goya] has selected from amongst the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual.."

"Since most of the subjects depicted in this work are not real, it is not unreasonable to hope that connoisseurs will readily overlook their defects."

"The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.. ..He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind.."

"Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons."

"..[to capture] the magic of the ambiance. - [in the fresco which Goya made c. 1798 of Saint Anthony of Padua ]"

"I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches.. .For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time... No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters.. ..and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting."

"Your Excellency, I am in receipt of His Majesty's royal order, which your excellency communicated to me on the 6th inst., accepting the offer of my work, the 'Caprichos' on eighty copper plate engraved with aqua-fortis by my hand, which I will hand to the Royal Calografia with the lot of prints which I had printed by way of precaution, amounting to two hundred and forty copies of eighty prints, in order not to defraud His Majesty in the least, and for my own satisfaction as to my mode of procedure. I am very grateful for the pension of twelve thousand reals which His Majesty has been pleased to grant to my son [Xavier Goya], for which I offer my best thanks to His Majesty, and to your excellency.. ..I only desire your excellency's orders, and that you may keep well. May God preserve your excellency's valuable life for many years.. .Your excellency's obedient and grateful servant, Franco de Goya."

"Always lines, never forms. Where do they find these lines in Nature? Personally I see only forms that are lit up and forms that are not, planes that advance and planes that recede, relief and depth. My eye never sees outlines or particular features or details... ...My brush should not see better than I do. [Goya, in a recall of an overheard conversation]"

"His Excellency Don José Palafox [famous Spanish general, who recaptured Zaragoza from the French army) called me to go to Zaragoza this week in order to see and examine the ruins of that city, with the intention that I should paint the glories of its inhabitants, something from which I cannot be excused because the glory of my native land [Goya was born in Zaragoza] interests me so much."

"'Fatal consequences of the bloody war against Bonaparte in Spain. And other emphatic caprices'"

"'Fatales consequensias de la sangrienta guerra en Espanã con Buonaparte. Y otros caprichos enfáticos'"

"Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta for the skill and great care with which he saved his [Goya's] life in his acute and dangerous illness, suffered at the end of 1819, at the age of seventy-tree years. He painted this in 1820."

"I sent you a lithographic proof that shows a fight of young bulls.. ..and if you found it worthy of distribution, I could send whatever you wish.. .I once again ask your advice, for I have three others made, of the same size and bullfight subjects."

"..As a matter of fact, last winter I was painting on ivory; I've already got a collection of forty studies, but these are original miniatures, of a kind I've never seen before, entirely done with the point of a brush, with details that are closer to the brushwork of Velásquez than to that of Mengs."

"letter to Joaquín Ferrer, 20 December 1825; as quoted by Robert Hughes, in: Goya. Borzoi Book - Alfred Knopf, New York, 2003, p. 393"

"Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure.. .I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before.. .I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina."

"The first prize for painting has been accorded to the canvas with the device Monies fregit aceto, by Monsieur Paul Borroni. The second prize for painting has been taken by Mr. Francois Goya, Roman, pupil of Mr. Bajeu, painter to the King of Spain. The Academy has noted in the second picture [of Goya] the beautiful management of the brush, and the depth of expression in the face of Hannibal, as well as the individuality and grandeur in the attitude of this general. If Mr. Goya had not been so slight in the composition of the subject, and if his coloring had been more truthful, he would have divided the votes for the first prize."

"The noises in his head and deafness aren't improving, yet his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance."

"Goya finds it absolutely impossible to paint, as a result of serious illness."

"The young woman left home as a little girl. She did her apprenticeship in Cádiz, and then came to Madrid where she had a stroke of good luck ('la cayó de lotería' / 'she won the lottery'). She went down to the paseo del Prado where she heard a dirty broken-down old women begging for alms. She sent the old woman away."

"His Majesty wishing to reward your distinguished merit and to give in person a testimony that may serve as a stimulus to all professors, of how much he appreciates your talent and knowledge of the noble art of painting, has been pleased to appoint you his chief painter of the Chamber, at a yearly salary of fifty thousand reals, which you will receive from this date free of rights, and also five ducats a year for a carriage. And it is also his pleasure that you occupy the house now inhabited by Don Mariano Maella, should he die first."

"All sorts of ugly birds, soldiers, commoners and monks, fly around a lady who is half-hen; they all fall, and the woman hold them down by the wings, make them throw up and pull out their guts."

"[Goya sought to record] the hatred that he felt for the enemy; which, being his natural way of feeling, was increased on the [French] invasion of the kingdom of Aragón, his native land, whose immense horror he wished to perpetuate with his brushes."

"[General] Palafox was insulted by the French and cruelly treated; they removed the surgeon who attended him, and placed a Frenchman in his place. In his room there were several drawings done by the celebrated Goya, who had gone from Madrid on purpose to see the ruins of Zaragoza; these drawings and one of the famous heroine, also by Goya, the French officers cut and destroyed with their sables at the moment too when Palafox was dying in his bed."

"[Goya is] in absolute penury [and wants] assistance [of public funds], to perpetuate with his brush the most notable and heroic actions or scenes of our glorious insurrection against the tyrant of Europe [= France]."