The guy went witnessing Spain go from baroque nobility to the birth of the modern nightmare in one lifetime… It’s impossible to not feel sad for him

Francisco Goya basically lived through the collapse of one world and the violent birth of another, and his art shows it in real time.

In the 1700s, Goya was riding high as a successful court painter in Spain. He created elegant portraits of the aristocracy, lavish religious scenes, and tapestries full of light, color, and the lingering glory of the Spanish Empire.

Spain still felt like the old baroque world of kings, saints, and Inquisition-era piety. Life for a talented artist like Goya was relatively stable, even glamorous.

Then the 1800s came. Goya was already in his 60s when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, triggering the brutal Peninsular War. What followed was years of savage guerrilla fighting, French atrocities, Spanish reprisals, famine that killed tens of thousands in Madrid alone, and the total breakdown of the old order.

Goya witnessed it all up close. He documented the horrors in his private series, later famous *The Disasters of War* – graphic prints showing executions, rape, starvation, and mutilated bodies that still shock people today.

After the war, Spain didn’t return to some golden age. Instead, it got political instability, the return of a repressive monarchy under Ferdinand VII, and the early tremors of industrialization and modernity.

By then Goya was deaf (from an illness in his 40s), increasingly isolated, and deeply disillusioned with humanity.

In his final years, living in the “Quinta del Sordo” (Deaf Man’s House) outside Madrid, he painted the Black Paintings directly onto the walls – fourteen nightmarish, chaotic works filled with witches, Saturn devouring his children, madness, and existential dread.

These weren’t commissioned pieces for kings. They were raw, private visions of a man who had seen his world transformed from aristocratic elegance into something darker, more violent, and unrecognizable.

The irony is, Goya didn’t even need to wait for the 20th century’s world wars or atomic bombs.

He had already seen the dawn of modern total war, the death of the old regime, and the terrifying birth of the modern age.

Imagine you were born around 1900 in Europe. You see the first Planes, the emergence if Cars, 2 World Wars and the Horrors it brings, the Nuclear Arms Race, Humans in Space and if lucky the earliest of Computers.

People forget how fast we developed in the last 120 Years.

Young Goya was kind of cute and cuddly looking ngl