Old Man GoyaIn 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted an illness that left him stone deaf. Yet he continued to interact with the world and to create, spending the next thirty-five years in a world emptied of sound but bursting with images of pageantry, cruelty, and pathos. In this brilliant, idiosyncratic book – a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation – Julia Blackburn vividly imagines the artist’s world during this time. She recreates the artist’s friendships and love affairs and breathes life into the subjects of his paintings: an ethereally lovely duchess; the spoiled grotesques of the Bourbon court; the atrocities of the Napoleonic wars. Old Man Goya is a rare work of empathy and imagination, a stunning portrait of the mind and life of a great artist. |
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Alley of Love Belchite birds body Bordeaux Brugada bull bullfight Cadiz Caprichos child church close cloth cork oak crowd Daisy Bates dance darkness dead deaf died door drawing dream dressed Duchess etchings exile eyes face feet fingers floor France Francisco de Goya Francisco Goya Fuendetodos gathered Gumersinda hair hand head hold huge hunting Javier Josefa killed King landscape laugh legs Leocadia letter lithography living look Madrid Manuel Godoy Mariano Martinez mask metal Molina Moratin mouth moved mules naked Naked Maja night once painter paintings palace pale Paris Peninsular War plate portrait Rosario royal sand Sebastian Martinez side silence sitting skin smell smiling soldiers Spain Spanish stare stayed stone street trees turned village walk walls wanted watch wearing wife window woman women wooden yellow young Zapater Zaragoza