20/11/15
Goya: The
Portraits
National
Gallery
7 October
2015 – 10 January 2016
The late
eighteenth/early nineteenth-century Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya, is not
generally thought of in terms of light, rather in terms of darkness. His best-known
works are arguably his fourteen Black Paintings, which depict, in very dark
terms, the atrocities of the Napoleonic War and the artist’s fear of insanity.
However, a third of Goya’s output comprises portraits and more than 150 of
these still survive today. The current exhibition at the National Gallery, the
first dedicated to this genre of his work, showcases nearly half of them.
Read the rest of this review here
Image:
Francisco de
Goya
María
Luisa wearing a Mantilla, 1799
Oil
on canvas, 205 x 130 cm
Colecciones
Reales, Patrimonio Nacional, Palacio Real de Madrid
©
Patrimonio Nacional