charitable to excess; for, shortly after the bull-fighting
episode, Goya found himself in Rome, where his next exploit was the
abduction, from a convent, of a noble Roman girl. With the police once
more on his track, he sought refuge at the Spanish Embassy, whence
he was despatched home in disguise, probably to the relief of his
country's representative in Rome. Before this adventure, which was
only one of many which the charitable wife had to pardon, he had
attracted the attention of David, who was then in Italy, and who,
as his art differed in every way from that of Goya, must have been
strongly impressed by his work to give it his approval.

[Illustration: DEATH ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. FROM AN ETCHING BY GOYA.

One of the plates from the "Disasters of War" where the grotesque and
huge figure of Death appears to the combatants.]

On arriving home Goya was given employment in designing a series of
tapestries for the royal palace; and from 1780, when he was made a
member of the Spanish Royal Academy, ensues the period of his
greatest artistic activity. Carrying into his art the same excess
of temperament which marked his life, his execution was rapid and
decisive. Rebellious to the ordinary means employed by painters, he
used various mediums, some of which have ill withstood the ravages of
time; and, disdaining brushes, he often employed sponges or bits of
rag in their place. In the case of one of his pictures, a revolt of
the Madrilenians against the French, it is said that he employed a
spoon.

In 1799 Goya was made painter to the king, Charles III., whose
successor, the fourth of his name, continued his favor. The time,
which was that of the notorious "Prince of Peace," Godoy, was
favorable for a character like that of Goya, whose eccentricities were
looked upon with an indulgent eye by a court which must have felt
that its function was hardly that of moral censor. At least Goya, the
intimate of Maria Louisa and the court circle, by no means abandoned
his friends the bull-fighters and tavern-keepers. Fresh from an
altar-piece for a cathedral, or a royal portrait, his ready brush
found employment in rapidly painting a street scene, or even a sign
for a wine-shop. A whitewashed wall for canvas and mud from the gutter
for pigment, were the means employed to embody a patriotic theme at
the entrance of the French soldiers into Madrid--a popular masterpiece
executed to the plaudits of the crowd.

All this would seem to