b. March 30, 1746, Fuendetodos, Spain--d. April 16, 1828, Goya is considered the 18th Century's foremost painter and etcher of Spanish culture, known for his realistic scenes of battles, bullfights and human corruption. Goya lived during a time of upheaval in Spain that included war with France, the Inquisition, the rule of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and, finally, the reign of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. Experts proclaim these events -- and Goya's deafness as a result of an illness in 1793 -- as central to understanding Goya's work, which frequently depicts human misery in a satiric and sometimes nightmarish fashion. From the 1770s he was a royal court painter for Charles III and Charles IV, and when Bonaparte took the throne in 1809, Goya swore fealty to the new king. When the crown was restored to Spain's Ferdinand VII (1814), Goya, in spite of his earlier allegiance to the French king, was reinstated as royal painter. After 1824 he lived in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux until his death, reportedly because of political differences with Ferdinand. Over his long career he created hundreds of paintings, etchings, and lithographs, among them Maya Clothed and Maya Nude (1798-1800); Caprichos (1799-82); The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 (1814); Disasters of War (1810-20); and The Black Paintings (1820-23).  Related Paintings of Francisco de goya y Lucientes :. | The Divided Arena 1825 Lithograph | The Bravery of Martincho in the Ring of Saragassa | Self-Portrait with Doctor Arrieta | Tiburcio | The Milimaid of Bordeaux |
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Constantin Meunier
(12 April 1831 - 4 April 1905), Belgian painter and sculptor, was born in Etterbeek, Brussels. His first exhibit was a plaster sketch, "The Garland," shown at the Brussels Salon in 1851. Soon afterwards, on the advice of the painter Charles de Groux, he abandoned the chisel for the brush. His first important painting, "The Salle St Roch" (1857), was followed by a series of paintings including "A Trappist Funeral" (1860), "Trappists Ploughing" (1863), in collaboration with Alfred Verwee, "Divine Service at the Monastery of La Trappe" (1871) and episodes of the German Peasants' War (1878). About 1880 he was commissioned to illustrate those parts of Camille Lemonnier's description of Belgium in Le Tour du monde which referred to miners and factory-workers, and produced "In the Factory," "Smithery at Cockerill's," "Melting Steel at the Factory at Seraing" (1882), "Returning from the Pit," and "The Broken Crucible" (1884). In 1882 he was employed by the government to copy Pedro de Campaña's "Descent from the Cross" at Seville, and in Spain he painted such characteristic pictures as "The Cafe Concert," "Procession on Good Friday," and "The Tobacco Factory at Seville" (Brussels Gallery). On his return to Belgium he was appointed professor at the Louvain Academy of Fine Arts. In 1885 he returned to statuary and produced " The Puddler," "The Hammerer" (1886), "Firedamp" (1889, Brussels Gallery), "Ecce Homo" (1891), "The Old Mine-Horse" (1891), "The Mower" (1892), "The Glebe" (1892), the monument to Father Damien at Louvain (1893), "Puddler at the Furnace" (1893), the scheme of decoration for the Botanical Garden of Brussels in collaboration with the sculptor Charles van der Stappen (1893), "The Horse at the Pond," in the square in the north-east quarter of Brussels, and two unfinished works, the "Monument to Labour" and the Zola monument, in collaboration with the French sculptor Alexandre Charpentier. The "Monument to Labour," which was acquired by the State for the Brussels Gallery, comprises four stone bas-reliefs, "Industry," "The Mine," "Harvest," and the "Harbour"; four bronze statues, "The Sower" "The Smith" "The Miner," and the "Ancestor"; and a bronze group, "Maternity". Meunier died at Brussels on 4 April 1905. Constantin Meunier was a freemason, and a member of the lodge Les Amis Philanthropes of the Grand Orient of Belgium in Brussels. He was one of the cofounders of the Societe Libre des Beaux-Arts of Brussels. In 1939, a museum dedicated to him was opened in the last house in which Meunier lived and worked, in Ixelles. Today about 150 of his works are displayed there.
CARACCIOLO, Giovanni Battista
Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1578-1635 Italian painter. He was one of the greatest Caravaggesque painters and the founder of Neapolitan Caravaggism. His Liberation of St Peter (c. 1615; Naples, Pio Monte della Misericordia; ) and Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples (1622; Naples, Certosa di S Martino; see fig. 2 below) are masterpieces of 17th-century Neapolitan art, and attain a powerful and tragic grandeur.
Eugeen Van Mieghem
(1 October 1875-1930) was a Belgian artist born in the port of Antwerp. As a boy Van Mieghem was confronted with the harsh reality of life at the waterfront. Even at primary school he showed a talent for drawing. He was introduced to the work of Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat, Camille Pissarro, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others at an exhibition organised by Flemish painter and architect Henry van de Velde at the Antwerp Academy around 1892. He attended the Antwerp Academy but was sent from school because his conservative teachers disliked his subject matter and his free, spontaneous way with it. He threw his lot in with progressive political and cultural movements, and joined an anarchist group. By the early 1900s was recognized as one of the most promising young artists of the Antwerp school. He would never renounce his idealism. He became the artist of the typical harbour folk: sack porters, sack makers, emigrants, dockers, bargees, and tramps. Van Mieghem had his first taste of real success at La Libre Esthetique in Brussels, where his pastels and drawings hung alongside works by French impressionists such as Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Camille Pissarro, Jean Renoir and Edouard Vuillard.