0:00:02 > 0:00:06This programme contains scenes of a sexual nature and some violence.
0:00:06 > 0:00:12Since I began writing art criticism over 40 years ago, I've seen thousands of images,
0:00:12 > 0:00:18but I've always been fascinated by one particular artist, a Spaniard, Francisco Goya.
0:00:18 > 0:00:23This man was one of the most radical artists that ever lived.
0:00:23 > 0:00:28For years, I've been trying and failing to write a book about him.
0:00:28 > 0:00:33In a weird way I didn't expect - for how could I? - he took me over.
0:00:34 > 0:00:39About three years ago, I was nearly killed in a car wreck.
0:00:40 > 0:00:44Six weeks in coma, months in hospital -
0:00:44 > 0:00:47no white light, no smiling Jesus.
0:00:50 > 0:00:56Only darkness and hallucination and the creatures of Goya's imagination,
0:00:56 > 0:00:58mocking and chattering.
0:00:58 > 0:01:05The whores and duchesses and witches and corrupt priests, all laughing at me,
0:01:05 > 0:01:10certain that this wrecked Ingles, imprisoned by the ruin of his body,
0:01:10 > 0:01:14could never reach into their world - Goya's world.
0:01:15 > 0:01:20But in some way, nearly dying brought me nearer to it.
0:01:23 > 0:01:25So I hope his people were wrong.
0:01:35 > 0:01:43I think of this film as a journey into a country I've never explored enough, which always fascinated me.
0:01:43 > 0:01:50The name of that country is Goya. He's a country because he includes so much. He has such enormous range.
0:01:50 > 0:01:58There's such a huge diversity of feeling and sensation and type and character in him.
0:01:58 > 0:02:04For a long time now, he's haunted my dreams and I've wanted to understand him.
0:02:04 > 0:02:11To me, he's one of the defining figures of the 19th century, because he looks forward into the 20th
0:02:11 > 0:02:16and tells us what we have in common with our ancestors.
0:02:16 > 0:02:21Other artists do this - Beethoven was one, Dickens another,
0:02:21 > 0:02:27but in the visual arts, in that department, Goya reigns supreme.
0:02:31 > 0:02:37Here he is in 1792, at the age of 46, painting himself in Madrid.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41He wears a bullfighter's jacket. It's a declaration.
0:02:41 > 0:02:46Goya identified the risks of art with those of the corrida.
0:02:46 > 0:02:53It was a declaration of toughness too, like a painter in the '60s wearing a black leather jacket -
0:02:53 > 0:02:57"I'm hard, with it, a man of the people."
0:03:00 > 0:03:04Who were Goya's people?
0:03:04 > 0:03:10Well, practically everyone in Madrid on the bridge between the 18th and 19th centuries
0:03:10 > 0:03:13and practically everyone today too.
0:03:15 > 0:03:23Goya's themes, his subjects, are ours, as fresh and modern as if he were working in our own time.
0:03:23 > 0:03:30He wasn't afraid to look on the world as a dark place where terrible things happen - he knew it WAS.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37The images from his imagination seemed shocking in HIS time,
0:03:37 > 0:03:44but even today, to look at many of them is to recoil from their brutality and directness.
0:03:46 > 0:03:51Some much younger artists have tried to bring him up-to-date,
0:03:51 > 0:03:54but all they can do is parody him.
0:03:55 > 0:04:01This is a work by two of the supposed bad boys of recent British art,
0:04:01 > 0:04:04Jake and Dinos Chapman.
0:04:04 > 0:04:11It's a direct take from Plate 39 of Goya's Disasters Of War - Big Risk With Dead Men.
0:04:11 > 0:04:17Compared to the original, with colour added, it's Barbie Doll Madame Tussaud's.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24But Goya has always had a very real resonance for modern art.
0:04:24 > 0:04:30He lies behind Dali's extraordinary premonition of the Civil War,
0:04:30 > 0:04:32and this, not Picasso's Guernica,
0:04:32 > 0:04:37is to me the greatest painting inspired by that disaster.
0:04:38 > 0:04:46'He's like a household god, a keeper of conscience, to many artists, like American painter Leon Golub.'
0:04:49 > 0:04:54This guy was born on the wrong side of the world somehow. OK?
0:04:54 > 0:04:59He was clever enough, smart enough, skilful enough, tough enough
0:04:59 > 0:05:01to play the world's game.
0:05:01 > 0:05:07So he could do the kind of things that were necessary to prove himself.
0:05:07 > 0:05:11- There's something else in him. - What is it?
0:05:11 > 0:05:15It's wildness. His wildness shows in his paintings.
0:05:16 > 0:05:21He's a rum character, you know. He's all over the place.
0:05:21 > 0:05:28- You can't grab him.- No, cos he bites. He's a dog.- That's right. That's right, he bites.
0:05:33 > 0:05:40It's just that difficulty in pinning Goya down that keeps him alive and always fresh.
0:05:42 > 0:05:49Court painter, satirist, war reporter with a taste for brutality and refinement in equal measure.
0:05:52 > 0:05:57He feeds off popular culture, but isn't simply a man of the people.
0:05:57 > 0:06:01He's both reporter and moralist.
0:06:06 > 0:06:09He's weird. He's unpredictable.
0:06:12 > 0:06:19Two paintings of the same subject sum up the huge changes that took place in Goya over his long career.
0:06:19 > 0:06:23They could be by different artists, light and dark.
0:06:23 > 0:06:29Here, he was painting a big religious feast day, that of San Isidro.
0:06:29 > 0:06:34On that day, thousands of citizens in their Sunday best
0:06:34 > 0:06:38converged on a pilgrimage chapel outside Madrid and had a picnic.
0:06:38 > 0:06:44It's almost an Impressionist scene - girls with parasols, men in finery,
0:06:44 > 0:06:47the sense of social pleasure and jollity,
0:06:47 > 0:06:52and you feel how much Goya wants to belong to this Madrid.
0:06:52 > 0:06:5830 years later, he returned to the same theme with very, very different results.
0:06:58 > 0:07:04This picture here is called La Romeria a San Isidro,
0:07:04 > 0:07:06The Pilgrimage To San Isidro.
0:07:06 > 0:07:12Instead of those happy, fashionable, well-dressed young people,
0:07:12 > 0:07:15you have this...horrible snake
0:07:15 > 0:07:20of beggars and gypsies and dark figures
0:07:20 > 0:07:25rolling towards the camera, like demons crawling across an ash-heap.
0:07:27 > 0:07:30The landscape is dark and miserable.
0:07:30 > 0:07:35The faces of the people in front, as this crowd rises up to meet you,
0:07:35 > 0:07:39they're the faces of madmen and hysterics.
0:07:42 > 0:07:45They've a terrible darkness to them.
0:07:45 > 0:07:52The whole picture is deeply threatening, deeply irrational, profoundly weird.
0:07:54 > 0:08:00You wouldn't want to be in the open with those characters - they might eat you.
0:08:01 > 0:08:07Now, that's the difference between the Goya who painted the Pradera,
0:08:07 > 0:08:14with all those young Madrilenas he wanted to know and maybe even wanted to make love to,
0:08:14 > 0:08:17and the Madrid that Goya saw
0:08:17 > 0:08:22through the filter of his old age and his intense pessimism.
0:08:38 > 0:08:43Very few artists have ever changed as dramatically as Goya did.
0:08:43 > 0:08:50This is part of the enigma of his career that fascinates me, that I want to find out about.
0:08:50 > 0:08:55We can start the journey by beginning at his beginnings,
0:08:55 > 0:08:57in the village where he was born.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12Goya wasn't a peasant. Nothing like it.
0:09:12 > 0:09:19He was born in a humble place because his father was working there and his mother was heavily pregnant.
0:09:19 > 0:09:23They were in Fuendetodos, a tiny place outside Zaragoza,
0:09:23 > 0:09:27where his mother had a cottage, but didn't live.
0:09:27 > 0:09:32A poor, stony village, like thousands of others in Spain,
0:09:32 > 0:09:37but now an obligatory stop on the Goya pilgrimage trail.
0:09:38 > 0:09:43TRANSLATION FROM SPANISH:
0:10:22 > 0:10:29I've never been here before and it doesn't tell me much. A cottage with furniture his family never owned.
0:10:31 > 0:10:38And nice to know that the great man came from somewhere, that he drank water, ate stew
0:10:38 > 0:10:40and probably had a cat.
0:10:40 > 0:10:47Nice, harmless heritage stuff. The fact is that you don't learn from places where artists were born.
0:10:47 > 0:10:50And Fuendetodos is no exception.
0:10:50 > 0:10:55Except that the bare, harsh landscapes around the village
0:10:55 > 0:10:59do become part of the signature of Goya's later work.
0:11:01 > 0:11:06What really counted in Goya's upbringing was the city of Zaragoza,
0:11:06 > 0:11:11the capital of Aragon, where his father worked as a gilder,
0:11:11 > 0:11:18and where he made his first contact with professional artists, the Bayeu brothers, who taught him,
0:11:18 > 0:11:21and their sister, Josefa, whom he later married.
0:11:25 > 0:11:28In the 1770s,
0:11:28 > 0:11:34he landed a big commission to paint a cycle of murals for a Carthusian monastery, 20km out of town.
0:11:37 > 0:11:40Now, this is interesting stuff.
0:11:40 > 0:11:46The Carthusians are what's known as a closed, contemplative order of monks.
0:11:46 > 0:11:53They observe silence. Visitors are only rarely allowed in their Charterhouse, called the Aula Dei,
0:11:53 > 0:11:58and women are never, ever granted access,
0:11:58 > 0:12:04hence very few people have seen the young work of Goya here and it's never photographed.
0:12:11 > 0:12:13What was the commission?
0:12:13 > 0:12:1911 huge paintings telling the story of the life of the Virgin Mary.
0:12:19 > 0:12:26But once inside the chapel, you see at once that most are not by Goya, or only partly so.
0:12:32 > 0:12:36What happened? Leakage and seepage.
0:12:36 > 0:12:41The inexperienced Goya painted right on the plaster walls with oil paint,
0:12:41 > 0:12:46then the rising damp cracked the paint, blackened it, ruined it,
0:12:46 > 0:12:51and turned Goya's biggest project into a fiasco.
0:12:51 > 0:12:55So the Carthusians, who only cared about the religious story,
0:12:55 > 0:13:00hired a couple of French artists to completely redo the Goyas.
0:13:00 > 0:13:06It's a weird effect - Goya repainted by genteel French Pre-Raphaelites.
0:13:07 > 0:13:12Yet they've got a power and presence that is still recognisably Goya's.
0:13:12 > 0:13:19The only surviving mural here that is entirely Goya is the scene of the betrothal of the Virgin,
0:13:19 > 0:13:26which even through its damage, still conveys some sense of the big-scale effects Goya strove for
0:13:26 > 0:13:30in that large, broad, planar drapery.
0:13:32 > 0:13:38To me, it's fascinating to see how early Goya became Goya.
0:13:38 > 0:13:45Here he is, very young, a kid, and you can begin to see the lineaments of the mature Goya coming out -
0:13:45 > 0:13:50certain figures and themes he brings in for the first time.
0:13:50 > 0:13:54That tremendous sense of being able
0:13:54 > 0:13:57to create drama without overdoing it that he had.
0:13:57 > 0:14:03The looming backgrounds, shadows, silhouettes, the alteration of the eye-line -
0:14:03 > 0:14:06all that is already present.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12It's like hearing the opening notes of a symphony.
0:14:15 > 0:14:23And, as he often would in years to come, as earlier painters he admired in the past had, like Tiepolo,
0:14:23 > 0:14:27Goya painted himself right into some of the murals.
0:14:28 > 0:14:33I wish we'd had more time at the Aula Dei to study them,
0:14:33 > 0:14:37but film crews gum up the work of religious meditation,
0:14:37 > 0:14:43and much as I'd like more time for contemplation, I'm not so sure about chastity and silence.
0:14:59 > 0:15:03Goya finished the murals in 1774
0:15:03 > 0:15:08and he went to Madrid to join Ramon Bayeu and his brother Francisco,
0:15:08 > 0:15:13who in 1777 was made director of the Royal Tapestry Works.
0:15:15 > 0:15:22And now, a stream of commissions for tapestry designs started coming Goya's way.
0:15:23 > 0:15:28Thanks to his in-laws, the 29-year-old was on his way at last.
0:15:30 > 0:15:35And from then on, Madrid would always be the key city for Goya.
0:15:35 > 0:15:41He lived there, he painted its life, he served its kings for 40 years,
0:15:41 > 0:15:46he made portraits of nearly everyone in it, from ministers to beggars.
0:15:46 > 0:15:51And by far the majority of his best works of art have stayed there.
0:15:51 > 0:15:55130 paintings in one museum alone, the Prado.
0:16:18 > 0:16:23Hanging a room with tapestries was one of the best ways to decorate it.
0:16:23 > 0:16:29A whole factory, still going today, the Royal Tapestry Works of Santa Barbara,
0:16:29 > 0:16:34had been set up by Charles III to produce them.
0:16:37 > 0:16:43Unlike murals, tapestries could be changed. But they had to be woven from designs,
0:16:43 > 0:16:48and making those designs was Goya's job.
0:16:49 > 0:16:52In time, he'd find this work a bore.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57And the tastes of the clientele restricted the range.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00He was expected to make idylls -
0:17:00 > 0:17:06happy scenes of modern city and country life, generally as led by the lower classes,
0:17:06 > 0:17:11on which the knobs and nobles could gaze with amused condescension.
0:17:19 > 0:17:24After the weaving was done, Goya's designs were rolled up and stored.
0:17:24 > 0:17:26Luckily, this preserved them,
0:17:26 > 0:17:33so the paintings, more interesting and beautiful than their woven replicas, hang in the Prado today.
0:17:38 > 0:17:42What was he learning from all this cartoon work?
0:17:42 > 0:17:46How to handle detail, action, expression, pose.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51It all fed into his later narrative paintings and his portraits as well.
0:17:51 > 0:17:56And he was learning, most important, about how to please a client,
0:17:56 > 0:18:01an act without which no painter, in an art world based on patronage,
0:18:01 > 0:18:05had the ghost of a chance of success.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11You have to prove yourself at a certain level in some of these societies. OK?
0:18:11 > 0:18:17Then you start introducing - not even deliberately, but because this is who you are -
0:18:17 > 0:18:23the face with the sort of expression which is a bit more diabolical.
0:18:23 > 0:18:26And there you are coming out.
0:18:27 > 0:18:32The tapestry designs aren't all amusement and light.
0:18:32 > 0:18:38You see signs of the darker Goya beginning to show through - the blind guitarist, for instance.
0:18:39 > 0:18:46It's the kind of subject that would have been familiar to admirers of Goya's great forerunner, Velazquez.
0:18:46 > 0:18:50Painters were always doing dwarfs and cripples.
0:18:50 > 0:18:57But there's something not just pathetic, but strong and imposing, about Goya's old blind man.
0:18:57 > 0:19:00Like many of Goya's later phantoms,
0:19:00 > 0:19:05this bony person won't just go away when you toss him a coin,
0:19:05 > 0:19:11as that gentleman tourist in the yellow coat, fishing for his purse, is about to do.
0:19:11 > 0:19:15GUITAR STRUMS
0:19:31 > 0:19:36The big year of promise for Goya was 1788.
0:19:36 > 0:19:41Charles III died, and his son, Charles IV, succeeded him.
0:19:41 > 0:19:47He and his queen, Maria Louisa of Parma, would reign for nearly two decades.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52Carlos made Goya his chief court painter.
0:19:52 > 0:19:57The accolade brought him to the peak of material and financial success.
0:19:57 > 0:20:01Goya would later be stricken down with a terrible illness.
0:20:01 > 0:20:05Spain would be plunged into a nightmare of confusion and war.
0:20:05 > 0:20:12But how secure this enormous palace in Madrid, with its 1,200 rooms, must have seemed then.
0:20:12 > 0:20:19And how impregnable the grandeur of its monarchs, whom Goya repeatedly painted.
0:20:28 > 0:20:34Carlos, the bumbling squire, who liked nothing better than hunting,
0:20:34 > 0:20:38and had no mind for political intrigue -
0:20:38 > 0:20:42Goya painted him in his shooting gear
0:20:42 > 0:20:46with his retriever, which, notice, has traces
0:20:46 > 0:20:50of the letters "G-O-Y-A" on its collar.
0:20:50 > 0:20:55Maria Luisa, the impetuous Italian princess,
0:20:55 > 0:21:00no genius, but certainly the most maligned woman in Spain.
0:21:00 > 0:21:06The story took root, and spread, that Goya's portraits of this couple were cartoons.
0:21:06 > 0:21:10Ever since the French writer, Theophile Gautier,
0:21:10 > 0:21:18called this portrait of Carlos and his family, "A picture of the corner grocer who's just won the lottery,"
0:21:18 > 0:21:25people have had the idea that, in some way, Goya was satirising his subjects. It's complete nonsense.
0:21:25 > 0:21:30You did not keep a job or make money as an official court portraitist
0:21:30 > 0:21:36if you were satirising the people you were painting. In fact, each of the figures here
0:21:36 > 0:21:43was the subject of several preliminary studies, which the sitter would then see before.
0:21:43 > 0:21:49No, no, this is NOT a send-up. This is actually, if anything, an act of flattery.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52For instance, on the left, in the blue suit,
0:21:52 > 0:21:58is one of the most odious little toads in the history of Spanish politics -
0:21:58 > 0:22:03the future King Ferdinand VII, the then Prince of Asturias -
0:22:03 > 0:22:06who Goya actually manages to make quite regal.
0:22:06 > 0:22:09God knows how he did it, but he DID.
0:22:09 > 0:22:14This is very much an act of homage. It is very much an act of respect,
0:22:14 > 0:22:18almost verging upon an act of flattery.
0:22:34 > 0:22:41Night falls in Madrid and, at the Prado, a new Goya show opens, called Goya And His Women.
0:22:41 > 0:22:46A vast subject and, partly because its patron is the Queen of Spain,
0:22:46 > 0:22:49the hottest cultural ticket in town.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52Here, you can see the enormous range
0:22:52 > 0:22:57of Goya's depiction of the opposite sex...
0:22:57 > 0:23:00from ravishing beauties to wrinkled crones,
0:23:00 > 0:23:04duchesses, milkmaids and majas.
0:23:07 > 0:23:13But, as you go through it, you realise that he missed nothing,
0:23:13 > 0:23:19not a detail of costume, or make-up, or hairdo, not a jewel or a gesture.
0:23:19 > 0:23:25He was one of the greatest topographers of femaleness that Europe has ever known,
0:23:25 > 0:23:29and by far the greatest that Spain has produced.
0:23:31 > 0:23:35Yet in this immense hareem of the eye,
0:23:35 > 0:23:37one player is missing.
0:23:42 > 0:23:47She is in another palace, at the far end of its stately rooms,
0:23:47 > 0:23:50which she hasn't left in 50 years.
0:23:54 > 0:23:58Goya's relationship to her, and hers to him,
0:23:58 > 0:24:04has created more scandal-mongering and sexual gossip than almost any liaison in art history.
0:24:14 > 0:24:20Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana Alvarez de Toledo, the 13th Duchess of Alba,
0:24:20 > 0:24:27was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an intellectual, like some of her friends in Madrid.
0:24:27 > 0:24:34But she was a wonderful dancer, she was extremely beautiful, and a visiting Frenchman remarked,
0:24:34 > 0:24:41in a book he wrote on his travels in Spain, "There was not a hair on her head that failed to excite desire."
0:24:41 > 0:24:44And she was a fairly hairy girl!
0:24:47 > 0:24:54Goya painted and drew the Duchess over the years, sometimes in very intimate settings,
0:24:54 > 0:24:57doing her hair, doing her make-up.
0:24:57 > 0:25:03The myth has endured for a very long time that Goya and the Duchess had a wild affair.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06Alas, there is no evidence for it.
0:25:06 > 0:25:10It seems like the purest speculation and fantasy.
0:25:10 > 0:25:14But, although some women loved to have a fling with genius,
0:25:14 > 0:25:20why would so famous a beauty get involved with a man more than twice her age?
0:25:20 > 0:25:23I say, put it down to friendship.
0:25:23 > 0:25:27But the point is that Goya may not have thought that way.
0:25:27 > 0:25:34He must have felt her sexuality with the uncensorable instinct of a hound getting a scent.
0:25:34 > 0:25:41I think he desired her with the passionate but rather deluded possessiveness that men of his age,
0:25:41 > 0:25:45and MINE, can feel for much younger women.
0:25:45 > 0:25:52So he did a portrait of her that he kept, that never left his house, that she may never even have seen.
0:25:53 > 0:25:58On her finger are two rings, with her name and his.
0:25:59 > 0:26:04And she is pointing to two words written in the sand at her feet...
0:26:04 > 0:26:08"Solo Goya" - "Only Goya".
0:26:08 > 0:26:11But it's HIS fantasy, not hers.
0:26:11 > 0:26:13That's the sad thing.
0:26:27 > 0:26:29Oh...!
0:26:29 > 0:26:31Whoa...!
0:26:31 > 0:26:36I just wish there was a little bit more pink on the right nipple.
0:26:38 > 0:26:41It's hardly a surprise
0:26:41 > 0:26:45that a great deal of fantasy surrounds this picture -
0:26:45 > 0:26:49The Naked Maja - one of the most famous nudes in the world.
0:26:49 > 0:26:56But Spain had almost no tradition of the nude, and Goya was, to a degree, breaking the mould
0:26:56 > 0:26:59when he made this gorgeous girl.
0:26:59 > 0:27:04However, it's got absolutely nothing to do with the Duchess of Alba.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07Everybody thinks it does but, actually,
0:27:07 > 0:27:13in the year Goya painted her, the Duchess of Alba was 40 years old
0:27:13 > 0:27:19and beginning to die of the breakbone fever which eventually took her life away.
0:27:19 > 0:27:26This is not a portrait of a 40-year-old woman suffering from dengue fever and tuberculosis.
0:27:26 > 0:27:31Probably, it is a picture of the mistress of the Prime Minister,
0:27:31 > 0:27:34whose name was Godoy,
0:27:34 > 0:27:40and who was madly enraptured with this Malagan cutie called Pepita Tudo.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43This, I am sure, is actually Pepita.
0:27:43 > 0:27:48I've often thought what my feelings about the subject are.
0:27:48 > 0:27:54They are, naturally, of admiration for the formal qualities of the painting,
0:27:54 > 0:27:57but, in reality, they are unmodulated lust.
0:27:57 > 0:28:04What I would really like to do - and, alas, neither time nor the Prado guards would permit it -
0:28:04 > 0:28:09is to hop in there like a bee in a peony and have a wonderful afternoon.
0:28:20 > 0:28:24At first, Goya was very happy in Madrid.
0:28:24 > 0:28:28He had lots of work, and for top people. Rolling in cash,
0:28:28 > 0:28:33he boasted to his boyhood friend from Zaragoza, Martin Zapater,
0:28:33 > 0:28:37he's making 15,000 reales a year as court painter,
0:28:37 > 0:28:44he's got a beautiful, brand-new English carriage that will turn on a dime, he's the envy of the town.
0:28:46 > 0:28:50And then, it all went horribly wrong.
0:28:50 > 0:28:57Late in 1792, he was staying with a friend in Andalucia, named Sebastian Martinez,
0:28:57 > 0:29:01and he had a sudden attack of illness.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04TRANCE-LIKE MUSIC
0:29:04 > 0:29:07Vertigo, nausea, blindness,
0:29:07 > 0:29:10noises in the head, deafness.
0:29:10 > 0:29:15In time, some of the symptoms abated, but the deafness, no.
0:29:17 > 0:29:19SILENCE
0:29:23 > 0:29:27For the rest of his life, Goya was stone-deaf.
0:29:28 > 0:29:31It was a catastrophe.
0:29:31 > 0:29:35"I can stand on my own feet," he wrote to Zapater,
0:29:35 > 0:29:38"but I don't know if my head is on my shoulders.
0:29:38 > 0:29:45"I have no appetite or desire to do anything at all. I don't know what will become of me."
0:29:45 > 0:29:52What did deafness mean for Goya? Well, it wasn't a simple answer. On the one hand, it imprisoned him.
0:29:52 > 0:29:59It put him right in the dungeon of the self from which he could not communicate with people outside.
0:29:59 > 0:30:06No more conversation, no more jokes. On the other hand, it liberated something in him.
0:30:06 > 0:30:13It turned him away from being the court portraitist that he otherwise might have remained,
0:30:13 > 0:30:19into...this amazing topographer... of the inner self,
0:30:19 > 0:30:25of everything that had to do with hallucination and madness, craziness and fear.
0:30:42 > 0:30:45Some of the work Goya did just after he went deaf
0:30:45 > 0:30:49hangs in the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid,
0:30:49 > 0:30:54and to go there is like walking into a microwave, it's so intense.
0:31:00 > 0:31:04If there's one point where the modern temper in art is born,
0:31:04 > 0:31:10it's surely these Goyas of the 1790s whose violence and irrationality
0:31:10 > 0:31:15seems to match the catastrophic social upheavals of the time.
0:31:19 > 0:31:23The work was small - "cabinet pictures", he called it.
0:31:24 > 0:31:30It was private, but almost all about disasters and bad places.
0:31:36 > 0:31:41The idyllic world of the cartoons might never have existed.
0:31:41 > 0:31:46Instead, you have religious craziness, orgiastic ceremonies,
0:31:46 > 0:31:49dark pageants based on folklore,
0:31:49 > 0:31:53like this vision of sinister masks and banners -
0:31:53 > 0:31:56The Burial Of The Sardine.
0:31:58 > 0:32:03If there's anything Goya did, it was facing his own demons.
0:32:03 > 0:32:07If an artist faces them, it's gonna come through.
0:32:09 > 0:32:13I think that there were things moving through him,
0:32:13 > 0:32:18forces moving through him, that were almost ripping him apart.
0:32:21 > 0:32:24Through his art, he controlled them.
0:32:25 > 0:32:30He made it work! If he hadn't had his art, he'd have ended up in an asylum.
0:32:36 > 0:32:39Prisons, madhouses...
0:32:39 > 0:32:43These, too, were the shapes of his own fears.
0:32:45 > 0:32:50Madhouses in the 18th century weren't reformatories.
0:32:50 > 0:32:54The offered no treatment, no cure - they were just dumps,
0:32:54 > 0:32:59holes in the social surface, charters for degradation.
0:32:59 > 0:33:06Goya knew this well. In the 1760s, his aunt and uncle had been shut up in the asylum at Zaragoza.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09Maybe he feared madness was in his blood.
0:33:10 > 0:33:18He painted one madhouse scene which is deliberately a satire on the world of power and order -
0:33:18 > 0:33:23the world upside down, madmen dressed as kings,
0:33:23 > 0:33:27gestures of power and chivalry with no meaning,
0:33:27 > 0:33:32inverted sex, in the form of one man fellating another in the corner.
0:33:40 > 0:33:46But for Goya, the most powerful of all images of an inverted world
0:33:46 > 0:33:48was witchcraft.
0:33:55 > 0:34:00Who believes in the power of witches today? Practically no-one.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05Who did in Spain in the late 18th century?
0:34:05 > 0:34:08Practically everyone.
0:34:09 > 0:34:12Did Goya believe in them?
0:34:12 > 0:34:16Well, yes and no. Nominally, he was a sceptic,
0:34:16 > 0:34:21but his deepest feelings were always engaged by the old, black Spain -
0:34:21 > 0:34:24not of Frenchified Madrid,
0:34:24 > 0:34:27but of deep Aragon.
0:34:32 > 0:34:35This one, Witches In The Air,
0:34:35 > 0:34:39is, for me, the best of all his witch pictures.
0:34:41 > 0:34:44A traveller on a lonely road
0:34:44 > 0:34:47is swept up into the sky by three male witches.
0:34:47 > 0:34:52Their bodies are compact and muscular. They defy gravity.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56They're gobbling like owls at the flesh of their prey.
0:34:57 > 0:35:00It's horrible and totally real,
0:35:00 > 0:35:02almost mundane...
0:35:02 > 0:35:07which is part of Goya's point - just part of the world.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18It was believed that witches stole the lives of babies
0:35:18 > 0:35:22as a sacrifice to bigger witches or to the Devil himself.
0:35:23 > 0:35:27Today, this makes no sense, but it made more sense
0:35:27 > 0:35:32in a time of huge infant mortality like Goya's time.
0:35:36 > 0:35:41Goya's own wife may have been pregnant 20 times,
0:35:41 > 0:35:44but only one son made it through to adulthood.
0:35:46 > 0:35:52It was very easy to believe that evil beings were stealing your children.
0:35:52 > 0:35:55Even if you DIDN'T believe in that,
0:35:55 > 0:36:00you could still get an enjoyable thrill out of the witch cult,
0:36:00 > 0:36:04the way you and I might enjoy a Dracula movie,
0:36:04 > 0:36:06though we don't believe in vampires.
0:36:11 > 0:36:17This is probably why pictures of witchcraft account for about one in every four plates
0:36:17 > 0:36:21of his satirical series on Spanish life, the Caprichos,
0:36:21 > 0:36:28Goya's first great graphic masterpiece and a milestone, both in the history of satire
0:36:28 > 0:36:32and in the development of fine etching technique.
0:36:34 > 0:36:37In February 1799,
0:36:37 > 0:36:43Goya paid for a newspaper ad in the Diario de Madrid, which announced its publication.
0:36:43 > 0:36:49The author, he declared, "has selected from among the innumerable foibles and follies
0:36:49 > 0:36:56"to be found in any civilised society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices
0:36:56 > 0:37:00"which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual,
0:37:00 > 0:37:07"those subjects which he feels to be suitable material for satire and which, at the same time,
0:37:07 > 0:37:10"stimulate the artist's imagination."
0:37:48 > 0:37:53About 20 of the plates referred to witchcraft.
0:37:53 > 0:37:56Some 25 were about sex and marriage,
0:37:56 > 0:37:59seduction, prostitution,
0:37:59 > 0:38:01kidnapping, rape,
0:38:01 > 0:38:05and, in general, the miseries of love.
0:38:10 > 0:38:12He gets at monks and priests,
0:38:12 > 0:38:15the Inquisition,
0:38:15 > 0:38:18the wiles of quacks and doctors,
0:38:18 > 0:38:21the pretensions and follies of aristocrats.
0:38:21 > 0:38:25It's a pretty complete indictment.
0:38:25 > 0:38:30He doesn't believe that women are good and faithful, or that men are decent and honourable,
0:38:30 > 0:38:34or that those in power deserve to be.
0:38:34 > 0:38:37All three he treats as fantasies.
0:38:38 > 0:38:43He won't accept the familiar scheme of goodies and baddies,
0:38:43 > 0:38:49because, to him, all Madrid society is linked in a series of agreements
0:38:49 > 0:38:52or, to put it bluntly, deals.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55"I grab from you, you grab from me.
0:38:55 > 0:38:58"Each of us loses and each gets something."
0:39:01 > 0:39:04These were risky things
0:39:04 > 0:39:07for a court painter, of all people, to be saying,
0:39:07 > 0:39:11and the series was a giant commercial flop.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15Only 27 sets out of the original 300 sold.
0:39:15 > 0:39:19The public Goya hoped for,
0:39:19 > 0:39:23that he wanted to create, that he wanted to find,
0:39:23 > 0:39:26just didn't get it.
0:39:28 > 0:39:33Well, you know, I've had a lot of success, OK? Of all kinds.
0:39:33 > 0:39:40At the same time, I have felt...that a lot of my work has NOT been seen.
0:39:40 > 0:39:47It's been seen, but it's not been seen. There's a certain avoidance within the art world to see it.
0:39:47 > 0:39:54- That's because of its political, or aggressive, or whatever the hell we're talking about...- Mm-hm.
0:39:54 > 0:40:02- ..attitude. And it's not just true of me, but of a fair number of artists. - Do you think it's true of Goya?- Yup.
0:40:02 > 0:40:07The only way society protects itself, finally, is by not seeing them.
0:40:07 > 0:40:11Then when the artist has departed and the situation's over,
0:40:11 > 0:40:17- they can say, "Ah, yes! We understand you!"- "What a master!"- What? ..Yeah.
0:40:17 > 0:40:20And then it's partly recognised politically,
0:40:20 > 0:40:25but it's sort of aestheticised after 25, 30, 50 years, and so on.
0:40:25 > 0:40:28Because it's aestheticised,
0:40:28 > 0:40:34it permits the general public to look at it with less, uh...squeamishness.
0:40:34 > 0:40:39But if it's right in their face, they don't like to look at it.
0:40:42 > 0:40:46Of all the hundreds of prints that Goya did, this one -
0:40:46 > 0:40:52The Dream Of Reason Brings Forth Monsters - is the most famous.
0:40:52 > 0:40:58It is Goya's summing up of his belief in the supremacy of reason,
0:40:58 > 0:41:01but the weakness of that supremacy.
0:41:05 > 0:41:08Goya was certainly no atheist.
0:41:08 > 0:41:15He despised superstition, he hated priestly corruption, but he was very much on the side of faith.
0:41:15 > 0:41:21I don't think he could have brought off his last great church commission otherwise -
0:41:21 > 0:41:27the decoration of the dome and vaults of a small church in Madrid, San Antonio de la Florida.
0:41:27 > 0:41:31The story that Goya tells in this church wasn't new -
0:41:31 > 0:41:36it went back to the 13th century - and it probably wasn't true,
0:41:36 > 0:41:39but, my God, it was well told.
0:41:39 > 0:41:43It concerns St Anthony of Padua, a Fransiscan monk in Italy,
0:41:43 > 0:41:50who, one day, received the news that his father, who was living in Portugal, had murdered a man.
0:41:50 > 0:41:54Naturally, St Anthony didn't believe this,
0:41:54 > 0:41:57so he flew, miraculously, to Lisbon,
0:41:57 > 0:42:01where he was able to raise the corpse from the dead,
0:42:01 > 0:42:07and the corpse spoke and said, "No, it wasn't your father, it was that guy over there."
0:42:07 > 0:42:14The saint's father was released, and Goya had the chance of a lifetime, several hundred years later,
0:42:14 > 0:42:21to paint this extraordinary crowd of people reacting, or, in some cases, NOT reacting to a miracle,
0:42:21 > 0:42:26and creating what was, in effect, a terrific panorama
0:42:26 > 0:42:30of street life on a paseo of Madrid, high in the sky.
0:42:33 > 0:42:36A vast theatre of emotion is in this dome -
0:42:36 > 0:42:41wonder, doubt, gaping curiosity, dumb piety.
0:42:41 > 0:42:44These faces are real, lived-in,
0:42:44 > 0:42:46not polished and idealised.
0:42:46 > 0:42:50This is not late-rococo religious froth.
0:42:50 > 0:42:55It plainly affirms Goya's interest and faith in plain people.
0:42:55 > 0:42:58Charles Dickens would have loved it.
0:43:04 > 0:43:10By 1808, the external politics of Spain had become dreadfully complicated.
0:43:10 > 0:43:14Napoleon managed to smuggle a whole army into Spain,
0:43:14 > 0:43:22to trick Charles IV, his Queen, and their son, Ferdinand, into going to France, where they were interned.
0:43:22 > 0:43:29Then Napoleon put his own brother, Joseph, on the throne in Madrid, backed by a French army.
0:43:30 > 0:43:33The people of Madrid rebelled.
0:43:33 > 0:43:37With knives, clubs and their teeth,
0:43:37 > 0:43:43they attacked a force of Napoleon's Egyptian mercenaries on the Puerta del Sol, the main square of Madrid,
0:43:43 > 0:43:47on the 2nd of May, 1808.
0:43:48 > 0:43:55Next day, Napoleon's army rounded up everyone who looked like an insurgent
0:43:55 > 0:43:57and shot them without trial.
0:43:57 > 0:44:03Thus the 2nd and the 3rd of May became dates of tremendous symbolic importance -
0:44:03 > 0:44:11the rebirth of Spanish identity, the start of a great war of national liberation
0:44:11 > 0:44:17that the Spanish would win against all the odds, against the greatest war machine in Europe.
0:44:23 > 0:44:27And Goya became the tragic poet of this process,
0:44:27 > 0:44:30the first great war reporter in art.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36He set to work on a monumental series of etchings,
0:44:36 > 0:44:44entitled Fatal Consequences Of The Bloody War Against Bonaparte In Spain With Other Emphatic Caprices.
0:44:44 > 0:44:49It's known for short as the Disasters Of War.
0:44:53 > 0:44:57He was 62 now, much too old for a war correspondent,
0:44:57 > 0:45:01a breed of journalist that in any case didn't exist yet,
0:45:01 > 0:45:03and too deaf even to hear a gunshot.
0:45:04 > 0:45:07"Yo lo vi," - "I saw this,"
0:45:07 > 0:45:13he inscribed underneath one plate of refugees fleeing from a village.
0:45:13 > 0:45:16But perhaps he didn't see it.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Some of the atrocities he drew -
0:45:18 > 0:45:25the executions, the dismemberings, the rapes - he could not have seen and got away from alive.
0:45:32 > 0:45:37He wanted the fiction of being an eyewitness...
0:45:39 > 0:45:41..so he created a wholly new form,
0:45:41 > 0:45:46that of vivid, camera-cannot-lie, pictorial journalism,
0:45:46 > 0:45:50long before the invention of the camera.
0:45:51 > 0:45:54Art as an act of witnessing,
0:45:54 > 0:45:58drawing its power and its propaganda from its immediacy.
0:45:59 > 0:46:03Art as a lie in the service of truth.
0:46:05 > 0:46:08The illusion of being there when dreadful things,
0:46:08 > 0:46:12unimaginable things, happen to ordinary people.
0:46:15 > 0:46:19I was researching Goya's prices the other day,
0:46:19 > 0:46:26and one of the things that really amazed me, the cheapest prints of all are the Disasters Of War.
0:46:26 > 0:46:31- Even now?- Even now.- And they're the greatest.- And they're the greatest.
0:46:32 > 0:46:39Nobody wants - except a few maniacs - nobody wants to look at ugly things, OK?
0:46:39 > 0:46:43We recognise that our lives are relatively short.
0:46:43 > 0:46:50We want to have pleasure, OK? We want to have some orgasms here and there.
0:46:50 > 0:46:52We want to enjoy some landscapes.
0:46:52 > 0:47:00We want to enjoy automobiles and the whole business, OK? Why the hell do I have to look at this junk for?
0:47:00 > 0:47:02- Do you enjoy looking at Goya?- Yes.
0:47:02 > 0:47:09- D'you enjoy looking at the Disasters Of War, at the Black Paintings? - Yes, I think they're beautiful.
0:47:14 > 0:47:19But Goya fools you into believing that he's just saying how it was.
0:47:19 > 0:47:25That's why the Disasters can still bring tears to your eyes and mine.
0:47:25 > 0:47:27In war, ineloquence is best.
0:47:40 > 0:47:48Photography has made us used to every kind of disaster, even to catastrophes like September 11 2001,
0:47:48 > 0:47:54which produced hundreds of thousands of images, amateur and professional.
0:48:04 > 0:48:09In Goya's time, any record of witness was rare
0:48:09 > 0:48:13and witnessing on this scale was simply impossible.
0:48:17 > 0:48:21Only later do you realise how constructive the Disasters are.
0:48:23 > 0:48:30I think this was why Goya is still the god, the father figure, of every war photographer I've known.
0:48:33 > 0:48:38He could stare right down the beast's throat and not look away.
0:48:42 > 0:48:50Goya never made a cent from the Disasters. They weren't even printed until 1863, decades after his death.
0:48:50 > 0:48:57Throughout the war, he never drew any money from the salary due him as chief court painter,
0:48:57 > 0:49:01so he needed a big commission when the war was won
0:49:01 > 0:49:05and asked to be allowed to paint the moments of national glory from 1808,
0:49:05 > 0:49:10the Attack On The Mamelukes, or the Second Of May, for short,
0:49:10 > 0:49:15and the Execution Of The Patriots, or the Third Of May,
0:49:15 > 0:49:17both of which he finished in 1814.
0:49:17 > 0:49:22The Second Of May is a confused melee.
0:49:22 > 0:49:27It's almost chaotic, this record of men in the throes of anger and fear,
0:49:27 > 0:49:30stabbing and hacking at one another.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33Look at that boy on the right,
0:49:33 > 0:49:35afraid to stab, afraid not to stab.
0:49:36 > 0:49:41To me, though, the greater of the two paintings is the Third Of May,
0:49:41 > 0:49:48where the suspected rebels are being lined up and shot by the French firing squads.
0:49:48 > 0:49:53Goya was in Madrid at the time. Did he see the killings?
0:49:53 > 0:49:55Probably not.
0:49:55 > 0:50:01But the power with which he imagined them, you can't get that out of your mind.
0:50:07 > 0:50:14It has such a grand, tragic kind of construction to the whole thing, that there's really nothing like it.
0:50:14 > 0:50:19I mean, it's very simple, and yet it has tremendous resonance.
0:50:19 > 0:50:27The French firing squad - those anonymous backs leaning forward into the recoil of those big muskets,
0:50:27 > 0:50:30but you don't register them as people,
0:50:30 > 0:50:35whereas there's an intense humanity on every face of their victims.
0:50:35 > 0:50:40And then it all reaches a climax in that little Christ of the people
0:50:40 > 0:50:45in his white shirt, blazing with defiance, throwing out his arms
0:50:45 > 0:50:50in one last assertion of the primacy of life over death.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54You can't look at it without the impulse to weep.
0:50:54 > 0:51:01The extraordinary thing about the way that he paints the dead in this picture
0:51:01 > 0:51:03is that the blood is paint,
0:51:03 > 0:51:11but it has that kind of scratchy, half-dried quality that looks as though it actually is blood,
0:51:11 > 0:51:16as though the application of that pigment to the surface was done
0:51:16 > 0:51:22by the twitching hands of men who were dying and whose hands had already been dabbled in the blood.
0:51:23 > 0:51:28It has this very pressing reality. It tries to be true, not beautiful.
0:51:30 > 0:51:34I think it's one of the great pictures of all time...
0:51:34 > 0:51:36by anybody.
0:51:56 > 0:52:03It is no longer true that bullfighting is the national sport of Spain. Soccer is.
0:52:04 > 0:52:10But in Goya's day, the ritual of the bullring was central to Spanish identity.
0:52:10 > 0:52:16And today, I don't care what the self-appointed humanitarians think,
0:52:16 > 0:52:21I want to see fox-hunting preserved and bullfighting even more.
0:52:51 > 0:52:54Goya is everywhere in Spain still,
0:52:54 > 0:52:57a national passion.
0:52:57 > 0:53:02Whole fiestas and bullfights, like this one in Ronda,
0:53:02 > 0:53:07the spiritual heart of Spanish bullfighting, are dedicated to him.
0:53:07 > 0:53:12Goya returned to bullfighting often, right through his painting career.
0:53:12 > 0:53:20It was part of the old Spain that fed his imagination. In this, he was set against good liberal opinion.
0:53:20 > 0:53:25The ilustrados, the enlightened liberals, wanted bullfighting banned
0:53:25 > 0:53:29and it was banned for a while by Charles IV.
0:53:29 > 0:53:37But you might as well have tried to ban baseball in America by an act of Congress.
0:53:37 > 0:53:41Some things are just not culturally feasible.
0:54:39 > 0:54:44In 1816, when Goya set out on his great etchings of the arena,
0:54:44 > 0:54:49La Tauromaquia, Spain had just won the war against the French
0:54:49 > 0:54:55and I can't help seeing Goya's series as his affirmation of his country.
0:54:57 > 0:55:03Its 33 plates are partly a history of the ritual, but it's a fanciful history.
0:55:03 > 0:55:11From primitive Iberians hunting the bull, to the modern corrida, with its passes and suertes,
0:55:11 > 0:55:14and star toreadors,
0:55:14 > 0:55:16some of whom Goya knew personally.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29In describing all this, he vented his obsessions.
0:55:29 > 0:55:34He also recorded some of the tabloid sensations of the bullring,
0:55:34 > 0:55:39such as the bull that jumped into the front rows of the Madrid arena
0:55:39 > 0:55:42and gored to death the mayor of Torrejon,
0:55:42 > 0:55:47an image of almost incredible modernity and power,
0:55:47 > 0:55:49with scattering figures on the right
0:55:49 > 0:55:54played off against the void, the empty space on the left.
0:56:08 > 0:56:12Technically, the bullfights are brilliant etchings.
0:56:12 > 0:56:19Their use of two personages, light and dark, sun and shadow, gives them a tremendous narrative grip.
0:56:19 > 0:56:27No images of bullfighting have approached them since, not even, or especially not, Picasso's.
0:56:39 > 0:56:42He was into his 70s now.
0:56:42 > 0:56:44His glory days at court were over.
0:56:44 > 0:56:49The restored king, that hulking, absolutist toad, Ferdinand VII,
0:56:49 > 0:56:54he didn't like him much, and the feeling was mutual.
0:56:54 > 0:56:56Most of his friends were dead.
0:56:56 > 0:57:02His wife, of whom we know nothing, had died in 1812,
0:57:02 > 0:57:05though his only son, Xavier, was alive.
0:57:05 > 0:57:08He was still preyed on by illness.
0:57:08 > 0:57:15It wouldn't let him go. In 1820, the year he turned 74, it left an unforgettable painting,
0:57:15 > 0:57:20Goya's self-portrait with his friend and physician, Dr Arrieta,
0:57:20 > 0:57:27one of the most beautiful testaments of skill, compassion and caring friendship ever painted.
0:57:27 > 0:57:31A long way from the harsh satire on quacks in the Caprichos.
0:57:35 > 0:57:40Not so many artists can surprise you at that age.
0:57:40 > 0:57:45We dream of a great late style, but few achieve it.
0:57:46 > 0:57:49But, like Titian, Goya actually did.
0:57:49 > 0:57:57He reached deep into himself and pulled out something grand and frightening and unexpected.
0:57:58 > 0:58:02Goya had bought a farmhouse across the river from Madrid.
0:58:02 > 0:58:07It was called the Quinta del Sordo, the Deaf Man's House,
0:58:07 > 0:58:15not actually after Goya, but after its previous owner, a farmer who was also stone-deaf.
0:58:17 > 0:58:22He was solitary and he populated the walls of the Deaf Man's House
0:58:22 > 0:58:26with the phantoms of his imagination.
0:58:26 > 0:58:33From a modern perspective, these pictures which even now we can scarcely understand,
0:58:33 > 0:58:36are the climax of his long career.
0:58:41 > 0:58:46They got called the Black Paintings simply because they're so dark,
0:58:46 > 0:58:49dark in colour, dark in meaning.
0:58:49 > 0:58:53He painted them directly on the plaster in oils,
0:58:53 > 0:58:58which has made them a nightmare for conservators ever since.
0:58:58 > 0:59:04They might have been destroyed because after Goya's death the farmhouse was demolished,
0:59:04 > 0:59:11but it was bought by a French property speculator who had the murals detached from the walls
0:59:11 > 0:59:16and remounted on canvas, which is how we see them today in the Prado.
0:59:17 > 0:59:20There isn't a coherent narrative.
0:59:20 > 0:59:25There are scenes of witch covens, scenes of pilgrimage,
0:59:25 > 0:59:29hideously vital old crones slurping up their soup.
0:59:30 > 0:59:36There are Biblical figures, such as Judith killing King Holofernes,
0:59:36 > 0:59:40but absolutely no references to Jesus or to God.
0:59:41 > 0:59:46There is a terrifying reprise of his theme of the San Isidro pilgrimage.
0:59:46 > 0:59:49But now they're chanting or howling.
0:59:49 > 0:59:53They're making some kind of semi-animal noise, anyway.
0:59:54 > 0:59:57But they can't be heard.
0:59:58 > 1:00:02They're the creatures of Goya's own deafness,
1:00:02 > 1:00:06imprisoned on the other side of the glass.
1:00:06 > 1:00:11He's a man at the end of his rope and yet he's painting it explicitly.
1:00:11 > 1:00:17He couldn't have continued painting if he didn't start to let these monsters come out.
1:00:17 > 1:00:24- No, because he'd have been involved in an act of self-censorship.- Yes. - He never censored himself.
1:00:24 > 1:00:29Absolutely. Well, there wasn't much left to censor!
1:00:38 > 1:00:45Saturn, the god of melancholy and, not incidentally, the patron god of artists,
1:00:45 > 1:00:50eating one of his own children, as in the Greek myth.
1:01:00 > 1:01:06Is there another face in European art more frighted with hunger and despair,
1:01:06 > 1:01:09with the horror of self-awareness?
1:01:13 > 1:01:16The Greek Fates hovering in the air...
1:01:20 > 1:01:24..measuring and snipping the thread of human life.
1:01:28 > 1:01:31And that famous dog peering over a ledge,
1:01:31 > 1:01:36or perhaps trying to raise its head above the quicksand
1:01:36 > 1:01:38in which it's drowning.
1:01:38 > 1:01:41Goya saw more pathos in that dog
1:01:41 > 1:01:45than Rubens could get into a whole Crucifixion.
1:01:53 > 1:02:00- He's mad at the world, but he's also mad within himself.- But he's crazy like an artist, not like a madman.
1:02:00 > 1:02:03He's crazy like a genius.
1:02:03 > 1:02:06He's absolutely in control.
1:02:06 > 1:02:09He's out of control and he's in control.
1:02:09 > 1:02:12You can't separate the two with him.
1:02:12 > 1:02:14It's like this.
1:02:14 > 1:02:17That's his power.
1:02:22 > 1:02:29Goya was no more mad than Shakespeare was when he wrote the mad scenes for Ophelia or King Lear.
1:02:31 > 1:02:34Furious and inspired, yes.
1:02:36 > 1:02:38But infused with an icy control.
1:02:38 > 1:02:45And it's the combination of the fury and the control that announces the genius.
1:03:15 > 1:03:22I admire him so much, but he also frightens me because the thing about Goya is his authenticity.
1:03:22 > 1:03:30You feel that the demons that inhabit his work come absolutely out of the centre of his being.
1:03:30 > 1:03:34They're completely familiar to him.
1:03:34 > 1:03:37It's like he has breakfast with them.
1:03:37 > 1:03:40They are what we are.
1:03:42 > 1:03:48And he shows this with complete lack of any sort of embarrassment or pretence.
1:03:48 > 1:03:53You know, when you look at the Black Paintings,
1:03:53 > 1:03:56that there go I.
1:03:56 > 1:04:00The two men sunk up to their waists in the bog,
1:04:00 > 1:04:03belting at each other with sticks
1:04:03 > 1:04:08could be north and south Ireland, they could be Bosnia, Kosovo.
1:04:08 > 1:04:11They could be Talibans and Americans,
1:04:11 > 1:04:16just about any insoluble conflict between human beings,
1:04:16 > 1:04:21which is brought about by the madness of religion and property.
1:04:21 > 1:04:23That's why these are so powerful.
1:04:23 > 1:04:28They don't propagandise, but they leave you with no choice
1:04:28 > 1:04:35but to empathise with them and to realise that it could be you, it could be me
1:04:35 > 1:04:38and it probably is.
1:04:46 > 1:04:51In the end, he couldn't bear the Spain of Ferdinand any more.
1:04:51 > 1:04:59In 1824, aged 78, he asked his monarch for leave to go to a French spa to take the curative waters.
1:04:59 > 1:05:01He got permission.
1:05:01 > 1:05:07But he wasn't going to come back. Finally, this quintessential Spaniard was an exile.
1:05:07 > 1:05:14He settled in Bordeaux where his old friend, the writer Moratin, also an exile,
1:05:14 > 1:05:21reported that, "Goya has indeed arrived. Old, clumsy and weak, without a word of French,
1:05:21 > 1:05:25"and so happy and so anxious to try everything.
1:05:25 > 1:05:29"He ate with us, just as though he were a student,
1:05:29 > 1:05:33"and he kept drawing and drawing and drawing."
1:05:33 > 1:05:38One of his sketches sums it up, I think, an old man on sticks,
1:05:38 > 1:05:42hobbling along, forging ahead against his infirmity.
1:05:42 > 1:05:46He's staring us straight in the face and over him Goya has written,
1:05:46 > 1:05:50"Aun aprendo," - "I'm still learning."
1:05:53 > 1:05:56He died on April 16, 1828.
1:05:56 > 1:05:59He was 82 years old.
1:05:59 > 1:06:01He was buried in Bordeaux.
1:06:04 > 1:06:09In 1901, his remains were dug up and brought back to Spain.
1:06:09 > 1:06:13In 1929, they were moved and buried again,
1:06:13 > 1:06:19this time, in the church that he'd frescoed in Madrid, San Antonio de la Florida.
1:06:25 > 1:06:30Now he lies under the beautiful girl angels he had painted there.
1:06:33 > 1:06:36Well, nearly all of him does.
1:06:36 > 1:06:41When Goya was moved back from France, someone stole his head.
1:06:41 > 1:06:43It has never been found.
1:06:43 > 1:06:46One hopes it is somewhere in Spain.
1:06:59 > 1:07:06This is the bit where one's supposed to sum Goya up, wrap him up neatly, draw a line around his achievements.
1:07:06 > 1:07:13Well, I can't. Goya doesn't respond to such approaches any more than other big figures of his century do.
1:07:13 > 1:07:18There is no plausible way to put Beethoven in a capsule,
1:07:18 > 1:07:22or to say what the essence of Dickens was.
1:07:22 > 1:07:26Goya was one of those rare artists who had the daring, or folly,
1:07:26 > 1:07:31to take on the whole scale of human fate.
1:07:31 > 1:07:33It was a huge scale.
1:07:33 > 1:07:40And nobody works on it today because our sense of the possibility of art, what it can do,
1:07:40 > 1:07:45what it can say and why it can matter is so depleted.
1:07:45 > 1:07:52It never occurred to Goya that art might NOT be able to say anything and everything about our nature,
1:07:52 > 1:07:54our desires and our fears.
1:07:54 > 1:07:58He just assumed that it could and he went ahead.
1:07:58 > 1:08:06By assuming it, he left us with the difficult task of living up to his peculiar intensity.
1:08:06 > 1:08:11And if we can't, as is likely, at least he shows us that.
1:08:13 > 1:08:19Nearly 200 years after he died, to meet Goya is still to meet ourselves.
1:08:37 > 1:08:42Subtitles on 888 by BBC Scotland Subtitling BBC Scotland 2002
1:08:42 > 1:08:45E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk