The MFA in Boston is having a special on Goya and I researched him a little bit. His later work about the French occupation and the peninsular war is very moving, but it got me thinking about Spain’s violent colonial past not long before Goya’s period. Did he ever discuss this or paint about it?
Goya's spent most of his life exposing human suffering, man's plight. Study Los Caprichos where he ridicules the rich and powerful the church and superstitions. "He denounced the whole social structure, the church, money, the family, and also the human failings he despised: vanity, greed, the desires of the flesh... Lucidity and political conscious led him to chose exile." Maurice Guillaud , The Phantasmal Vision