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Goya's Early Royal Commissions

Goya earned a commission to design 42 tapestry patterns for Spanish royal residences between 1777-1789. While the work was not prestigious, it helped raise his profile. He also produced engravings copying old masters. His 1779 etching "The Garrotted Man" showed his growing technical skill and hinted at his later "Disasters of War" series. Goya claimed illness allowed his tapestry designs to become more personal, though he found the format limiting compared to painting techniques. The tapestries commented on Spanish society, and other works led to his appointment at the Royal Academy of Fine Art.

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98 views2 pages

Goya's Early Royal Commissions

Goya earned a commission to design 42 tapestry patterns for Spanish royal residences between 1777-1789. While the work was not prestigious, it helped raise his profile. He also produced engravings copying old masters. His 1779 etching "The Garrotted Man" showed his growing technical skill and hinted at his later "Disasters of War" series. Goya claimed illness allowed his tapestry designs to become more personal, though he found the format limiting compared to painting techniques. The tapestries commented on Spanish society, and other works led to his appointment at the Royal Academy of Fine Art.

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hockeyman1584
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Madrid (1775–1789)[edit]

The Parasol, 1777

The marriage and Francisco Bayeu's 1765 membership of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de
San Fernando and directorship of the tapestry works from 1777 helped Goya earn a commission for
a series of tapestry cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory. 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. While designing tapestries was
neither prestigious nor well paid, his cartoons are mostly popularist in a rococo style, and Goya used
them to bring himself to wider attention.[16]
The cartoons were not his only royal commissions, and were accompanied by a series of
engravings, mostly copies after old masters such as Marcantonio Raimondi and Velázquez. Goya
had a complicated relationship to the latter artist; while many of his contemporaries saw folly in
Goya's attempts to copy and emulate him, he had access to a wide range of the long-dead painter's
works that had been contained in the royal collection. [17] Nonetheless, etching was a medium that the
young artist was to master, a medium that was to reveal both the true depths of his imagination and
his political beliefs.[18] His c. 1779 etching of The Garrotted Man ("El agarrotado") was the largest
work he had produced to date, and an obvious foreboding of his later "Disasters of War" series.[19]

The Garroted Man, before 1780. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Goya was beset by illness, and his condition was used against him by his rivals, who looked
jealously upon any artist seen to be rising in stature. Some of the larger cartoons, such as The
Wedding, were more than 8 by 10 feet, and had proved a drain on his physical strength. Ever
resourceful, Goya turned this misfortune around, claiming that his illness had allowed him the insight
to produce works that were more personal and informal. [20] 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. The tapestries
seem as comments on human types, fashion and fads. [21]
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.

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