The Spanish painter Francisco Goya is often said to be both the last of the old masters and the first of the modern ones, which is quite the achievement. It's hard enough to be a master of one period, let alone two, but Goya seems to pull it off. Much of his success is owed to his prodigious talents as a painter, but another equally important factor, as is so often the case was the rapidly changing times he lived in. This was the period when the ideas of the Enlightenment were spreading across Europe and calling into question many of the traditional beliefs society was organised around. Writers such as Voltaire, Roseau and Locke had all proposed new ideas which questioned traditional power structures of church and state and called for more rational and humanistic approaches to organizing society. These ideas and the reforms they triggered would have a massive cultural impact and play an important role in the eventual development of modern art. As an artist who lived through this period Goya offers us a fascinating look at the influence these ideals had on artists. Goya's career is particularly interesting in this regard as it shows us not only the successes of Enlightenment thinking, but also the ramifications of its failures. While Goya was at first a believer over the course of his career he would lose faith in the dream of the Enlightenment as many of the promised reforms failed to materialize and those that did had unintended consequences. Today we are going to take a look at Goya and his work as well as the role those Enlightenment ideas played in shaping him into the first modern master, and perhaps the great grandfather of modern art.
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