With ravishing full-spread details of paintings and carefully-chosen details of many etchings, this splendidly-illustrated volume focuses on Goya’s profoundly disturbing imagery, and demonstrates that his modernity derives from his lifelong investigation of what lies behind the world of appearances and convention.

Werner Hofmann describes the essence of the great Spaish Artist Goya’s huge output, pointing to the source of its energy, alarming immediacy and striking modernity. ‘As an artist, Goya is on the side of the passions, the liberated as well as the suppressed, the liberating as well as the oppressive.’

Goya’s paintings, drawings and prints are placed in their historical context, revealing the specific character of each phase of the artist’s life and work. The author discusses ‘the glory and the pain of faith’ in Goya’s early work, the artist’s representation of the threat posed by the French Revolution, his dramatic documentation of the French occupation of Spain, his variations on cruelty in the Horrors of War etchings, and the religious faith apparent in his late work.

Hofmann also illuminatingly relates the artist and his work to contemporary intellectual developments, drawing comparisons with writers, critics and philosophers from Goethe to William Blake and the Marquis de Sade. The book also features extensive Notes, Chronology and a Bibliography.