Goya. Love and Death
“Here is a lover who, like those in Calderon, because he could not refrain from mocking his rival, is dying in the arms of his beloved, and by his temerity has lost all. It is not well to draw the sword too often.” From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 10).
Goya. Hunting for Teeth
“The teeth of those who have been hanged are very efficacious in bringing luck. Without this ingredient nothing worth while can be done. Is it not pitiful that the common folk believe such foolishness?” From “The Caprices” (Lefort No. 12).
On the purely technical side—the broad massing of sharply contrasted light and shade, the ability to tell a tale with the simplest means, the instinctive choice of the pictorially dramatic detail—Rembrandt and Goya stand alone.
On another side that is purely technical, it should be borne in mind that Goya is the only one who has availed himself of all the possibilities of aquatint—the only one who has used the medium with audacity and resolution and success; the only one who has dared use it to express powerful and fundamental things.
Goya, both in himself and for his influence, is one of the greatest artists that the world has seen these last hundred and fifty years—and his greatest work is his black and white.
THE ETCHINGS OF FORTUNY
By ROYAL CORTISSOZ