From princes to paupers: how Goya's portraits tell the story of Spain

folk traditions, and superstitions so comprehensively and relentlessly captured. His subject was a good one since Goya lived in interesting times: his lifetime was a period that saw Spain pass through the effects of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the restoration of the monarchy; it was ruled by a succession of authoritarian and liberal governments; and was simultaneously marked by the Enlightenment. Put his work together - the public and private paintings, the personal drawings and sketches, and the unsettling and sinister etching series - and what you have is a portrait in the round of Spain itself. B His work as a portraitist has its origins in the 45 tapestry cartoons he painted after he moved to Madrid in 1775. Although his designs don't show portraits, they do show types - the majos and majas who gave Madrid its street swagger, peasants and rich men, courting couples, singers, hunters, children, and young men and women playing blind man's buff or tossing a mannequin into the air. The pictures have a light, rococo palette and the faces are individualised without being those of individuals. But in them, Goya practised poses and groupings and a way of handling light on and around figures that was to be…