In the late 1790s, commissioned by Godoy, he completed his La maja desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez.

Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may have been his lover.

José was the son of a notary and of Basque origin, his ancestors being from Zerain,[5] earning his living as a gilder, specialising in religious and decorative craftwork.

[6] He oversaw the gilding and most of the ornamentation during the rebuilding of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar (Santa Maria del Pilar), the principal cathedral of Zaragoza.

Although there are no surviving records, it is thought that Goya may have attended the Escuelas Pías de San Antón, which offered free schooling.

[11] Rome was then the cultural capital of Europe and held all the prototypes of classical antiquity, while Spain lacked a coherent artistic direction, with all of its significant visual achievements in the past.

Having failed to earn a scholarship, Goya relocated at his own expense to Rome in the old tradition of European artists stretching back at least to Albrecht Dürer.

Early biographers have him travelling to Rome with a gang of bullfighters, where he worked as a street acrobat, or for a Russian diplomat, or fell in love with a beautiful young nun whom he plotted to abduct from her convent.

Over five years he designed some 42 patterns, many of which were used to decorate and insulate the stone walls of El Escorial and the Palacio Real del Pardo, the residences of the Spanish monarchs.

[20] His c. 1779 etching of The Garrotted Man ("El agarrotado"[21]) was the largest work he had produced to date, and an obvious foreboding of his later "Disasters of War" series.

[23] However, he found the format limiting, as it did not allow him to capture complex color shifts or texture, and was unsuited to the impasto and glazing techniques he was by then applying to his painted works.

[24] Other works from the period include a canvas for the altar of the Church of San Francisco El Grande in Madrid, which led to his appointment as a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art.

The most popularly cited models are the Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya was sometimes thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tudó, mistress of Manuel de Godoy.

[31] In 1808 all Godoy's property was seized by Ferdinand VII after his fall from power and exile, and in 1813 the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836 to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.

[32] In 1798 he painted luminous and airy scenes for the pendentives and cupola of the Real Ermita (Chapel) of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid.

In 1799 Goya published 80 Caprichos prints depicting what he described as "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".

[35] While convalescing between 1793 and 1794, Goya completed a set of eleven small pictures painted on tin that marked a significant change in the tone and subject matter of his art, and drew from the dark and dramatic realms of fantasy nightmare.

The condemnation of brutality towards prisoners (whether criminal or insane) is a subject that Goya assayed in later works[36] that focused on the degradation of the human figure.

[37] It was one of the first of Goya's mid-1790s cabinet paintings, in which his earlier search for ideal beauty gave way to an examination of the relationship between naturalism and fantasy that would preoccupy him for the rest of his career.

[38] He was undergoing a nervous breakdown and entering prolonged physical illness,[39] and admitted that the series was created to reflect his own self-doubt, anxiety and fear that he was losing his mind.

"[42] These symptoms may indicate a prolonged viral encephalitis, or possibly a series of miniature strokes resulting from high blood pressure and which affected the hearing and balance centres of the brain.

[45][46] Other postmortem diagnostic assessments include Susac's syndrome[47] or may point toward paranoid dementia, possibly due to brain trauma, as evidenced by marked changes in his work after his recovery, culminating in the "black" paintings.

[48] Art historians have noted Goya's singular ability to express his personal demons as horrific and fantastic imagery that speaks universally, and allows his audience to find its own catharsis in the images.

The extent of Goya's involvement with the court of the "intruder king", Joseph I, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, is not known; he painted works for French patrons and sympathisers, but kept neutral during the fighting.

By the time of his wife Josefa's death in 1812, he was painting The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808, and preparing the series of etchings later known as The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

The final 17 reflect the bitter disappointment of liberals when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812 and opposed both state and religious reform.

[57] It is thought that he had hoped for political and religious reform, but like many liberals became disillusioned when the restored Bourbon monarchy and Catholic hierarchy rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812.

[58] At the age of 75, alone and in mental and physical despair, he completed the work of his 14 Black Paintings,[C] all of which were executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house.

Leocadia Weiss (née Zorrilla, 1790–1856),[62][63] the artist's maid, younger by 35 years, and a distant relative,[64] lived with and cared for Goya after Bayeu's death.

[75] In the 21st century, American postmodern painters such as Michael Zansky and Bradley Rubenstein draw inspiration from "The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters" (1796–98) and Goya's Black Paintings.