The Eighteenth Century, known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason, advocated reason and rationality as the primary source for legitimacy and as a cure to all of society’s sicknesses. Emanuel Kant’s call to follow this program of intellectual self-liberation found many followers, also within Spanish elite social circles.

Although many Art Historians tend to depict Goya as the Romanticised ‘noble savage’ – a man with no formal education, an intuitive genius – one can not underestimate the influences of the social circles he was involved in –  amongst them some of the most prominent of the Spanish Enlightenment.

This lesson aims to focus on Goya’s inner contradictions and understand them in light of these turbulent times in Spanish history.