Francisco Goya Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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..

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.

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

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.

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.

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]

..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.

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

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 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.

Original: Nobia, Discreta y arrenpentida a sus padres se presenta en esta forma.