Francisco de Goya y Lucienties was born on March 30,1746 in Fuentdetodos , Spain , a small and poor agricultural village where his father had a modest gilder's shop. Goya spent a good deal of his childhood in Saragossa, and while the details of Goya's early life are minimal , it is known that at the age of 14 , he became an apprentice at the studio of painter Jose Luzan , a religious painter.
Goya tried and failed to enter the Madrid Academy at the age of 20 , and gained a reputation as a young man with an often violent nature given to fighting, but , again few details are rally known of his true nature or his painting. Goya only began to date his work as of 1771, when he seems to have established himself in Saragossa as an artist.
His first important commission seems to have been to decorate the choir vaults of the chapel of the Virgin designed by Ventura Rodriguez for the basilica of the Virgin del Pilar., which gave Goya an opportunity to execute works in the fresco technique. In 1774, Goya completed the wall paintings of the Carthusian monastery , eleven paintings which average roughly 250 square feet each.
The next period of Goya's art begins in 1774 -5 when he was asked to paint for the Royal Manufactury of Tapestries in the city of Madrid, where Goya went after achieving prosperity as a painter in Saragossa. Some of these "cartoons" for the Manufactury- "The Crockery Seller" , "The Kite" and "The Blind Guitarist "- are quite well known. In compensation for these works, Goya was rewarded with his election as a member in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. The first painting he delivered to the Academy was his "Crucifixion" (1780) . During this time he was received in to court by King Charles III , and allowed to study the royal collection of the paintings of Velazquez, and the study seems to have had a considerable effect on his art.
In 1789, Goya was appointed Painter of the Royal Household to King Charles IV , executing portraits of the new monarchs as well as "The Duke and Duchess of Osuna with Their Children" . Goya's work for the Tapestry Manufactury concluded in 1791, and soon after became ill , in fact near death in Cadiz in 1793, and when the illness abated, Goya was left completely deaf.
