The Bourbons, the Enlightenment and Goya
New kings, new palaces and an academy – and a deaf painter who saw the darkness of his age more clearly than anyone.
In 1700 the last Spanish Habsburg died, and the Frenchman Philip V became king, keeping his throne after a long war. The new dynasty, the House of Bourbon, brought French and Italian tastes. The kings built a new palace in Madrid after the old one burned down in 1734, and they laid out pleasure palaces with gardens such as La Granja. Meanwhile Spanish Baroque lived on in the churches, with lavish altarpieces in the style known as Churrigueresque.
Under Charles III, who reigned from 1759 to 1788, the court was shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment. The king modernised Madrid with broad streets, fountains and gates and had a natural history museum built that later became the Prado. The art academy in Madrid, founded in 1752, championed a Neoclassical style based on ancient models. Two foreign stars were summoned to court: the German Anton Raphael Mengs, an advocate of Neoclassicism, and the Venetian Giambattista Tiepolo, the last great Baroque painter. Madrid became a modern capital.
Francisco de Goya began his career with cheerful scenes of popular life for the royal tapestry weavers and went on to become court painter. After an illness in 1792–1793 he became deaf, and his art grew ever darker. He depicted superstition, folly and the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars in prints and paintings. His The Third of May 1808 is one of the first modern images of war. When he died in exile in 1828, he had paved the way for both Romanticism and modern art.