Francisco Goya quotes

Francisco Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker, regarded as one of the most influential artists of his time. His works capture both the grandeur and the darkness of Spanish society, often blending realism with powerful symbolism. He profoundly impacted the course of modern art and is remembered for his innovative and sometimes haunting masterpieces. Here are 53 of his quotes:

Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels.

Francisco Goya

I have had three masters, Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt.

Francisco Goya

Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons.

Francisco Goya

[T]here are no rules in painting and.... the oppression, or servile obligation, of making all study or follow the same path is a great impediment for the Young who profess this very difficult art that approaches the divine more than any other.

Francisco Goya

Your Excellency, I am in receipt of His Majesty's royal order, which your excellency communicated to me on the 6th inst., accepting the offer of my work, the 'Caprichos' on eighty copper plate engraved with aqua-fortis by my hand, which I will hand to the Royal Calografia with the lot of prints which I had printed by way of precaution, amounting to two hundred and forty copies of eighty prints, in order not to defraud His Majesty in the least, and for my own satisfaction as to my mode of procedure. I am very grateful for the pension of twelve thousand reals which His Majesty has been pleased to grant to my son [Xavier Goya], for which I offer my best thanks to His Majesty, and to your excellency.... I only desire your excellency's orders, and that you may keep well. May God preserve your excellency's valuable life for many years... Your excellency's obedient and grateful servant, Franco de Goya.

Francisco Goya

.. As a matter of fact, last winter I was painting on ivory; I've already got a collection of forty studies, but these are original miniatures, of a kind I've never seen before, entirely done with the point of a brush, with details that are closer to the brushwork of Velásquez than to that of Mengs.

Francisco Goya

'One to the other / Unos á otros' - Thus goes the world. We mock at and deceive each other. He who, yesterday, was the ball, is to-day the horseman in the ring. Fortune directs the feast, and distributes the parts according to the inconstancy of its caprice.

Francisco Goya

Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta for the skill and great care with which he saved his [Goya's] life in his acute and dangerous illness, suffered at the end of 1819, at the age of seventy-tree years. He painted this in 1820.

Francisco Goya

Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters.

Francisco Goya

The group of sorcerers who form the support for our elegant lady are more for ornament than real use. Some heads are so charged with inflammable gas that they have no need for balloons or sorcerers in order to fly away.

Francisco Goya

.. [to capture] the magic of the ambiance. - [in the fresco which Goya made c. 1798 of Saint Anthony of Padua ].

Francisco Goya

Fatal consequences of the bloody war against Bonaparte in Spain. And other emphatic caprices.

Francisco Goya

The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.... He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind..

Francisco Goya

I sent you a lithographic proof that shows a fight of young bulls.... and if you found it worthy of distribution, I could send whatever you wish... I once again ask your advice, for I have three others made, of the same size and bullfight subjects.

Francisco Goya

[the painting 'Yard with Lunatics' shows].. a yard with lunatics, and two of them fighting completely naked while their warder beats them, and others in sacks; (it is a scene I witnessed at first hand in Zaragoza).

Francisco Goya

No recognition / Nadie se conoce' [Goya wrote on this plate no. 6:] The world is a masquerade, faces, costumes, voices, everything a lie. Each person wishes to appear what he is not. The whole world deceives itself, and no one recognizes himself.

Francisco Goya

But now? well now, now I have no fear of Witches, goblins, ghosts, thugs, Giants, ghouls, scallywags, etc, nor any sort of body.

Francisco Goya

I tell you that I have nothing more to wish for. They were extremely pleased with my pictures, and expressed great satisfaction not only the King, but the Prince as well. Neither I nor my works deserve such recognition.

Francisco Goya

I have had luck with my St. Bernardino, not only with the experts, but with the public as well. Without any reservation, everyone is on my side. The King expressed his satisfaction before the whole Court.

Francisco Goya

I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches... For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time... No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters.... and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting.

Francisco Goya

I am now Painter to the King with fifteen thousand reales [a year].. ..the King sent out an order to Bayeu and Maella to search out the best two painters that could be found, to paint the cartoons for tapestries. Bayeu proposed his brother, and Maella proposed me. Their advice was put before the king, and the favor was done, and I had no idea of what was happening to me.

Francisco Goya

I have now established an enviable way of living, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me.

Francisco Goya