Francisco Goya: From Great to Genius.
The artist who wasn’t born a genius, but became one.
In one of his short aphorisms, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said:
‘Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.’
For the most of his life the Spanish painter Francisco Goya hit the targets no one else could hit. He came from a low-middle class family, but due to his exceptional talent he quickly became a painter at the 18th century Spanish court.
The Spanish nobility admired Goya for the beautiful portraits he painted of them. But for Goya, the admiration of aristocrats and the wealth it brought to him was not enough. In one of the letters to his friend — Don Martín Zapater with whom Goya corresponded for over 30 years, he wrote:
I tell you that I have nothing more to wish for. They were extremely pleased with my pictures, and expressed great satisfaction not only the King, but the Prince as well. Neither I nor my works deserve such recognition.
His paintings didn’t deserve recognition, Goya thought, because there was nothing original or exceptional about those works. They did not have anything that distinguished them from the works of other also talented painters that lived in Madrid at the time.
