Goya was born in the small Aragonese town of Fuendetodos on March 30, 1746. His father was a painter and a gilder of altarpieces, and his mother was descended from a family of minor Aragonese nobility. Facts of Goya's childhood are scarce. He attended school in Zaragoza at the Escuelas Pias. At the age of 14, Goya's formal artistic education commenced when he was apprenticed to a local master. José Luzan, was a competent although little-known painter in …showed first 75 words of 654 total…

…showed last 75 words of 654 total…to leave for France in 1824. In Bordeaux he took up the new art of lithography, producing a series of bullfight scenes. These paintings were considered among the finest lithographs ever made. Although he returned to Madrid for a brief visit in 1826, he died in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux two years later, on April 16, 1828. Goya left no immediate family members, but his influence was strongly felt in mid-19th-century painting and printmaking and in 20th-century art.