Goya - ''To every story there belongs another'' (Hardcover)

Discussions of Goya in recent decades have centred on his influence on 19th- and 20th-century painters. Hofmann redresses the balance, focusing instead on the Spanish artist's profoundly disturbing imagery, and demonstrating that Goya's modernity derives from his lifelong investigation of what lies behind the world of appearances and convention. Hofmann places Goya's paintings, drawings and prints in a biographical context, revealing the specific character of each phase of the artist's life and work. He discusses the "glory and the pain of faith" evinced by Goya's early work, the artist's parabolic representation of the threat posed by the French Revolution, his dramatic documentation of the French occupation of Spain, his variations on cruelty in the "Disasters of War" etchings, and the religious faith apparent in his late work. Hofmann also relates the artist and his work to contemporary intellectual developments, drawing comparison with writers, critics and philosophers from Goethe to William Blake to the Marquis de Sade.