Old Man Goya

In 1792 when he was fortyseven the Spanish painter Francisco de Goyacontracted an illness that left him stone deaf. Yet he continued to interactwith the world a... » 

In 1792 when he was fortyseven the Spanish painter Francisco de Goyacontracted an illness that left him stone deaf. Yet he continued to interactwith the world and to create spending the next thirtyfive years in a worldemptied of sound but bursting with images of pageantry cruelty and pathos. Inthis brilliant idiosyncratic book 8211 a kaleidoscope of biography memoirhistory and meditation 8211 Julia Blackburn vividly imagines the artist sworld during this time. She recreates the artist s friendships and loveaffairs and breathes life into the subjects of his paintings an ethereallylovely duchess the spoiled grotesques of the Bourbon court the atrocities ofthe Napoleonic wars. Old Man Goya is a rare work of empathy and imagination astunning portrait of the mind and life of a great artist. «