A BIOGRAPHY AND AN APPRECIATION. ILLUSTRATED BY REPRODUCTIONS OF 600 OF HIS PICTURES
THE last of the old masters and the first of the moderns, as he has been called, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes is not so familiarised to English readers as his genius deserves. He was born at a time when the tradition of Velazquez was fading, and the condition of Spanish painting was debased almost beyond hope of salvation; he broke through the academic tradition of imitation; “he, next to Velazquez, is to be accounted as the man whom the Impressionists of our time have to thank for their most definite stimulus, their most immediate inspiration.”
The genius of Goya was a robust, imperious, and fulminating genius; his iron temperament was passionate, dramatic, and revolutionary; he painted a picture as he would have fought a battle. He was an athletic, warlike, and indefatigable painter; a naturalist like Velazquez; fantastic like Hogarth; eccentric like Rembrandt; the last flame-coloured flash of Spanish genius.
It is impossible to reproduce his colouring; but in the reproductions of his works the author has endeavoured to convey to the reader some idea of Goya’s boldness of style, his mastery of frightful shadows and mysterious lights, and his genius for expressing all terrible emotions.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
LEON, BURGOS AND SALAMANCA
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH OVER 350 ILLUSTRATIONS
IN Leon, once the capital of the second kingdom in Spain; in Burgos, which boasts one of the most magnificent cathedrals in Spain, and the custodianship of the bones of the Cid; and in Salamanca, with its university, which was one of the oldest in Europe, the author has selected three of the most interesting relics of ancient grandeur in this country of departed greatness.
Leon to-day is nothing but a large agricultural village, torpid, silent, dilapidated; Burgos, which still retains traces of the Gotho-Castilian character, is a gloomy and depleting capital; and Salamanca is a city of magnificent buildings, a broken hulk, spent by the storms that from time to time have devastated her.
Yet apart from the historical interest possessed by these cities, they still make an irresistible appeal to the artist and the antiquary. They are content with their stories of old-time greatness and their cathedrals, and these ancient architectural splendours, undisturbed by the touch of a modernising and renovating spirit, continue to attract the visitor.