Focus on this artwork and analyze the Goya's stylistic progression up to Los Caprichos.
Goya’s artistic career was initially marked by his creation of artwork for the Spanish royalty; Goya was called to Madrid to produce preliminary paintings in the form of tapestry cartoons for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara (Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara). Goya began to produce oil-on-canvas cartoon paintings from which tapestries for the royal palaces could be made. According to many relevant sources of the time period, Goya displayed extraordinary skill in painting tapestry cartoons, and his talent apparently warranted the attention of the Neoclassical painter Anton Raphael Mengs. Some of the preliminary paintings he completed in Madrid included a series of nine hunting scenes for the dining room at the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo del Escorial (located in the municipality of San Lorenzo del Escorial near Madrid), as well as a series of ten cartoons for tapestries in the dining room of the Royal Palace of El Pardo.As Goya continued to engage with members of the aristocracy, he was met with an increasing quantity of royal patronage and received commissions at a higher frequency. Between the years of 1785 and 1788, Goya created works that depicted executives and their families from the Bank of San Carlos (el Banco Nacional de San Carlos) in Spain. In 1786, Goya was appointed the official painter to King Charles III, and in 1789 he was promoted to Court Painter under Charles IV (1788–1808) who had recently ascended to the throne.In the year 1792, Goya contracted an illness that left him permanently deaf; historians are unsure what the precise illness was that he suffered from, but it is speculated that Goya contracted either lead poisoning or “colic of Madrid” (a metal poisoning produced by cooking utensils), or some form of palsy. This illness caused him to suffer from an inability to balance on his feet, temporary blindness, and permanent deafness, which profoundly affected his life and his artistic style. In the years following his going deaf, Goya spent much of his time isolated from the outside world, as he asserted that he was unable to resume his work on large tapestry cartoons, and thus he turned to more personal projects. During this time, he studied the events and philosophies of the French Revolution, and created a series of etchings portraying the inherent vices and cruelties of human nature in a more pessimistic and sardonic style for which he would later become known. This series of prints, namely Los Caprichos, were published in 1799 and depicted the confines of human reason, featuring whimsical and fantastical creatures that invade the mind during dreams, as displayed in 'The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters' (El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos).During the year 1799, Goya was promoted by the Spanish crown to the position of First Court Painter, and spent the next two years working on a portrait of the family of Charles IV. In 1801, Goya published Charles IV of Spain and His Family, an oil painting that displays Charles IV of Spain and his family. Influenced by Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya painted the royal family in the foreground and himself in the background at an easel. This painting was shocking as it was very detailed and naturalistic; critics widely believed that the painting was meant as a criticism of the royal family as the members of the family were portrayed in a physically-unflattering manner.
San Lorenzo del Escorial lead poisoning Charles IV of Spain Charles IV of Spain and His Family Charles III Las Meninas Royal Palace of El Pardo Anton Raphael Mengs Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara tapestry cartoon Charles IV Royal Tapestry Factory