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Maybe someday
38
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
24/100Critics
53/100Scholars
Author:
Janis A. Tomlinson
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Date:
September 15, 2020
A Goya scholar returns to her subject afresh, drawing on a wide range of documentsâincluding letters, court papers, and a sketchbook used by Goya in the early years of his careerâto challenge the popular image of the artist as an isolated figure obsessed with darkness and death, showing how Goya's gregariousness and ambition contributed to his success at court.
What The Reviewers Say
Tomlinson’s dryly written accounts of the Spanish court are no Iberian Wolf Hall, but they feature arresting characters.
Tomlinson, a scholar who has been publishing on Goya for over three decades, is concerned to disentangle him from the retroactive politicizations of his admirers.
One of the pleasures of Tomlinson’s book lies in encountering the unvarnished details of Goya’s life; her delineation of the artist’s remarkably flexible political allegiances is especially engrossing. But those, like myself, who have long felt an emotional connection to the cryptic melancholy of his late works, which Goya originally frescoed onto the walls of his home...will find themselves chastened by her approach. She argues that 'the romantic image of Goya, deaf and isolated' recording his inner pain for his own contemplation, is not based in fact.
Janis A. Tomlinson...prefers to let the facts speak for themselves. One sometimes feels it isn’t enough.
