Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de

Goya was born unexpectedly in his mother’s birthplace, Fuendetodos. His parents, Braulio José Goya, a gilder; and Gracia Lucientes, from a family of wealthy farmers, actually lived in Zaragoza, where they had married in 1736. Francisco was the fourth of six siblings: Rita (1737), Tomás (1739), who was also a gilder and is sometimes mentioned as a painter; Jacinta (1743), Mariano (1750), who died in infancy; and Camilo (1753), a clergyman who became chaplain of the Collegiate Church of Chinchón in 1784.
Tradition has it that he studied at the school of the Piarist Fathers in Zaragoza, although this is not entirely certain. After completing those studies, he entered the studio of José Luzán (1710-1785), who was also the son of a gilder from the same neighborhood as the Goya family, with studies in Naples and ties to the Drawing Academy.
In biographical notes about his father that he wrote for the Academia de San Fernando (1832), Goya’s son, Javier, stated that “at the age of thirteen, he began studying drawing at the Academy in Zaragoza under the direction of José Luzán.” And in his autobiography for the Museo del Prado’s catalog (1828), Goya himself stated that he “had been given the finest prints he [Luzán] had in order to copy them,” although in his earliest known works there are barely any traces of Luzán’s late-baroque style. He later studied with Francisco Bayeu Subías (1734-1795), who was distantly related to the Goya family. Years later, Bayeu became Goya’s brother-in-law through the traditional union among families of artists. In 1771, the Accademia di Parma referred to Goya as “scolaro del Signor Francesco Vajeu” and he himself confirmed that relationship in 1783, at the marriage of his sister-in-law, María Bayeu, whom he had known for twenty years, having studied “at the Bayeu’s house.”
Goya’s beginnings in Aragon were modest. Around 1765, he is said to have made a reliquary—now destroyed—for the parish of Fuendetodos with the Apparition of the Virgin of the Column to the Apostle Saint James, as well as various private votive paintings that have been confirmed as by his hand in recent years. At that time, a career at court appeared to be the only possible opportunity for an aspiring young man. He moved to Madrid in 1763, following Bayeu, who was working on the decorations of the Royal Palace. In December 1763, Goya applied for a pension from the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, and in 1766 he competed for the first-class painting prize. He was unsuccessful on both accounts.
In a burst of independence, Goya traveled to Italy at his own expense, as he later stated in a report to Charles III (July 24, 1779), and documents show that he was in Rome in the spring of 1771, although the latest documentation found in his nuptial agreement indicates that his departure for Italy was in June 1769. According to tradition, while in Rome, he lodged with Polish painter Taddeus Kuntz at No. 48, Strada Felice (Via Sistina), in an artists’ neighborhood. Kuntz was a friend of Mengs, whose family confirmed Goya’s living arrangements ears later, although there is no documentation. The Italian Notebook (Madrid, Museo del Prado), a sketchbook that Goya purchased in Italy, contains his notes about his visits to northern cities such as Bologna, Venice, Parma and Milan, among others, and his return to Spain via Genoa and Marseilles.
In April 1771, he sent the painting Hannibal Sees Italy for the First Time from the Alps (Fundación Selgas Fagalde) to the contest held by the Accademia di Parma where, according to a 1772 issue of Mercure de France, he received an honorable mention. Various drawings from the Italian Notebook copy classical Roman sculptures, as well as a fresco by Giaquinto, several of Goya’s own compositions and the first documented ideas for early paintings, some of which he painted after returning to Spain between May and July 1771. His first commission was a fresco for the gazebo at the basilica of El Pilar, which he painted in 1771-1772 with the Adoration of the Name of the Lord. He signed this exceptionally modern and grand work as “Professor of Drawing in this City [Zaragoza]” (November 22, 1772).
On July 25, 1773, he was married in Madrid to Josefa Bayeu (born March 19, 1747) at the church of San Martín. Her brother, Fracisco Bayeu was best man at the wedding, accompanied by his wife, Sebastiana Merklein. Goya’s first child, Antonio Juan Ramón Carlos, was born on August 29, 1774 in Zaragoza, where his father was working on the frescoes for the Aula Dei Charterhouse. This is the child who appears in the Italian Notebook.
On January 3, 1775, Goya left Zaragoza, arriving in Madrid on the tenth, as noted in his Italian Notebook, to begin work as a cartoon painter for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara. His annual salary there consisted of 8,000 reales de vellón. Later, Goya proudly stated that it was Mengs who called him back from Rome to serve the Crown, although his first cartoons were based on Bayeu’s ideas. Painted in Spring 1775, they were for a series that was already under way for the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at El Escorial. The subject, which the king himself had chosen, was the hunt, which was also the artist’s lifelong favorite pastime. Dogs, shotguns and preferred hunting grounds, sometimes in the company of his illustrious patrons, are the subject of Goya’s considerable correspondence with his childhood friend, Martín Zapater (Madrid, Museo del Prado), a merchant from Zaragoza. These hunting grounds included the outskirts of Madrid, the Guadarrama mountains and El Escorial, Arenas de San Pedro, Chinchón, Valencia’s Albufera and the Doñana wetlands in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cadiz. Goya’s second child, Eusebio Ramón, was born in Madrid on December 15, 1775. At that time, Goya lived on the calle del Reloj, possibly at the Bayeu’s house, and between 1776 and 1778, he painted cartoons for the Prince and Princess of Asturias’s dining room at the El Pardo palace, with scenes from popular life in Madrid that included Dance on the Banks of the Manzanares and The Parasol. These scenes were born of his own imagination, with masterfully characterized popular types and amusing stories filled with satirical and moralizing content that clearly reflects the popular current favored by the Enlightenment. The naturalism and humor in these scenes makes them closer to the characters and situations described in skits by playwright Ramón de la Cruz, a friend in those years, than the work of Goya’s contemporaries. Moreover, his manner of characterizing his figures reveals the same knowledge of types and fashions as the illustrations that the writer’s brother, engraver Juan de la Cruz, presented in his Trages de España. The Italian Notebook shows that Goya intended to return to Italy with Mengs in 1777, but he fell gravely ill at the end of that year. In a letter to Zapater, he wrote that he had “narrowly escaped.” Meanwhile, he was commissioned to paint two more series of cartoons for the Tapestry Factory. Goya’s next two children, Vicente Anastasio (January 21, 1777) and María del Pilar Dionisia (October 9, 1779), were born in Madrid while Goya was living at the Marchioness of Campollano’s house on the carrera de San Jerónimo. Soon thereafter, the family obtained a house of their own, at no. 1, calle del Desengaño, where they remained until June 1800. Between 1778 and 1780, Goya painted tapestry cartoons for the bedroom of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at El Pardo, with scenes such as The Crockery Vender and Blind Man with a Guitar. This was also the period when he made prints of works in the royal collection by Velázquez, which were evaluated by scholar Antonio Ponz, as well as his own The Garroted Man and Blind Man with a Guitar. In a letter to Zapater, he described his presentation to the King and to the Prince and Princess of Asturias in January of that year: “…and I kissed their hands and had never been happier.”
On July 7, 1780, after presenting a classicist Christ on the Cross (Madrid, Museo del Prado), Goya was appointed Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando by unanimous decision. His fifth child, Francisco de Paula Hipólito Antonio Benito was born in August 22nd of that year, and in the fall, Goya moved with his family to Zaragoza to paint the fresco on the Regina Martyrum Dome at the Cathedral of El Pilar. That work was rejected in 1781 by the basilica’s board due to errors in the figure of Charity and to the overall darkness of the color scheme. Bayeu was called in to supervise Goya’s work but refused. As a result, relations between the two broke down, producing a distance that lasted several years and affected Goya’s work, as he lost the commissions previously passed on to him by his brother-in-law. His honor as an artist, which was a profound aspect of his character throughout his life, was restored when the minister of State, the Count of Floridablanca, commissioned him to paint a work for the basilica of San Francisco el Grande. He finished that painting, Saint Bernard of Sienna Preaching, in January 1783, and by then, he had a daughter: Hermenegilda Fracisca de Paula (April 13, 1782). In a letter to Zapater, his Carthusian brother-in-law, Friar Manuel Bayeu, expressed admiration for his fecundity. Sadly, however, only the last of Goya’s children, Javier (October 2, 1784), survived infancy. Goya’s activity as a portrait painter really began in the 1780s, as his only known previous work in that genre was a Self-portrait from around 1772-1775 (Zaragoza, Museo de Bellas Artes). Among his outstanding likenesses are Portrait of the Count of Floridablanca as Protector of the Canal de Aragón (1783, Madrid, Banco e España), and those he painted for his new patron, the infante Luis of Bourbon, who was in exile at his palace in Arenas de San Pedro (Avila). By then, Goya was already recognized by important members of his period’s cultural circles, including Antonio Ponz, mentioned above; Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, whose portrait he painted around 1783 (Oviedo, Museo de Bellas Artes); and the scholar and collector, Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez. His friendship with other figures, such as Leandro Fernández de Moratín and Juan Meléndez Valde´s, must have begun somewhat later, according to Ceán Bermúdez.
Goya was appointed assistant director of Painting at the Academy of San Fernando on May 1, 1785, with an annual salary of 25 doubloons (2,000 reales). And the following year (July 1786), after he resolved his disagreement with Bayeu, he was successfully proposed by Maella for the post of King’s Painter, with a salary of 15,000 reales.
In a letter to Zapater, Friar Manuel Bayeu mentioned this appointment, observing that “since they had not been on speaking terms for quite some time, this action by Francho [Bayeu] has been enormously satisfying to me. I hope to God they live in peace and properly.” Goya was thus able to return to work at the Royal Tapestry Factory after six years of inactivity. In 1786-1787, he made the Four Seasons series for the Prince’s dining room at El Pardo, and in 1788, he sketched the cartoons for tapestries to decorate the infantas’ bedroom, including The Meadow of San Isidro and Blind Man’s Buff (or Bluff). In the end, however, he only painted a definitive cartoon of the latter, as the project was suspended due to Charles III’s death. During that period, he also initiated a long relationship with the Household of the Duke of Osuna, which lasted until after the Peninsular War.
Goya had successfully made a place for himself in Court, where he was deeply admired. And as he told Zapater, by then, he painted only for the highest aristocracy and, of course, the King, whom he portrayed as a hunter around 1787 (Madrid, Museo del Prado). The decade concluded with his appointment to the post of Chamber Painter (April 30, 1789), and his portraits of the new monarchs, Charles IV and Maria Luis of Parma (Madrid, Academy of History). His abundant correspondence with Zapater during the 1780s reveals Goya’s friendship with the leading lights of Zaragoza’s socity, including Juan Martín de Goicoechea; Manuel Fumanal, director of the Seminary of San Carlos; Tomás Pallás, soldier and member of the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa; Alejandro Ortiz y Márquez, physician and senior professor at the university; José Yoldi, general administrator of the Canal de Aragón, and Ramón Pignatelli, founder of the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa, rector of the University and one of the driving forces behind the Canal de Aragón. These relations led to Goya’s selection as honorary member of the Real Sociedad Económica Aragonesa de Amigos del País on October 22, 1790. In Valencia, where he had painted works for the Duchess of Osuna’s chapel at the cathedral, and where he had contact with the Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos through its secretary, Mariano Ferrer y Aulet, he was named honorary academician on October 20, 1790. Three years earlier, he had informed Zapater that he was learning French, could already speak Italian and had gotten “old, with so many wrinkles that you would not recognize me except for how rounded I am, and my deep-sunk eyes […] and I am certainly feeling every one of my 41 years.” Goya’s missives to his intimate friend reveal his interests, as well as demonstrating what a good son, brother and father he was, and the warmth of his relations with his friends. He enjoyed bullfights, and Moratín even stated that during his years in Bordeaux Goya boasted of having fought bulls himself in his youth. He also attended the theater and the opera, as well as concerts at court. His joyful character is patent in his taste for “tiranas” (an 18th-century musical genre close to Flamenco), parties with friends and family, visits to Valencia to “take the sea air”, and to Zaragoza for the Feast of Our Lady of Pilar. In 1783, he began signing his works, “Francisco de Goya” as an allusion to his noble origins in Vizcaya, but all efforts to obtain the status of squire failed, as he could find nothing in the Zaragoza archives to support his pretensions to nobility.
Early symptoms of the grave illness that struck him at the beginning of 1793 began appearing in late 1790, including trembling and dizziness that he mentions in letters to Zapaterat that time. In 1791, Goya resisted Maella’s order to continue painting tapestry cartoons, leading the director of the Royal Tapestry Factory, Livinio Stuyck, to complain to the king. Bayeu’s intervention and the threat of a salary cut led him to reconsider, and he then began preparations for his last series: thirteen cartoons for King Charles IV’s office at El Escorial, with “jocular country scenes.” In the end, he painted only six, including The Wedding and The Straw Manikin. On October 14, 1792, at the petition of the Academy of San Fernando, Goya signed a report on Fine Arts teaching, in which he expressed the need for freedom in painting studies, which he defined as a “sacred science.” He attended the Extraordinary Board Meeting of October 28, but missed the one on November 18 as a result of colic, and he collected his salary as an academician in early January 1793. Having received royal leave, he traveled to Seville, where he fell ill in February. We know this from his friend Zapater’s correspondence with Sebastián Martínez, a merchant from Cadiz. Martínez was also a friend of Goya’s, as was Ceán Bermúdez, who moved him to that merchant’s home in Cadiz after he became ill. In early March, Martínez stated the “his illness is among the most fearful” and towards the end of that month, he added that “the noise in his head and his deafness have not diminished at all, but his vision is much better, and he no longer loses his balance.” Zapater replied that “as I said, Goya has been caught by his own lack of prudence.” This ambiguous phrase has led to considerable speculation as to the nature of the disease that left Goya permanently deaf, including syphilis, lead poisoning, “colic of Madrid” (a metal poisoning produced by cooking utensils) or Palsy.
He returned to Madrid in early May 1793, and the following January, he presented his decisive series of cabinet paintings on tin to the Academy of San Fernando. The subjects of this work included bullfighting scenes and other “national pastimes” such as street theater (Madrid, Museo del Prado), as well as dramatic subjects such as The Shipwreck, Night fire (private collections), Yard with Madmen (Dallas, Meadows Museum) and A Prison Scene (Bowes Museum), which were painted with independence, free of any impositions by clients. The following months may be when Goya completed the final tapestry cartoons for the King’s dining room, which he had begun before his illness. A letter from September 1794 indicates that he underwent unsuccessful electrotherapy for his deafness. In that letter, the artist requested the reparation of a glass disk belonging to an “electric machine” that he had received from Pierre François Chaveneau, director of the Royal Chemistry Laboratory. He was back to work by the fall of that year, and in 1795, he was painting portraits and other commissioned works including the images of Cadiz’s Santa Cueva. That was when he grew closer to Godoy, and it is also when he began to receive the patronage of the Dukes of Alba, leading to the modern tale—based on the weakest of indications—that he was amorously involved with the duchess. Following Bayeu’s death in August 1795, Goya was appointed director of painting at the Academy of San Fernando. And it was during that brilliant period that he began his drawing albums—the Sanlúcar Album and the Madrid album that are now dated from around 1794-1795. The confident and delicate technique visible in the drawings they contain bears no trace of the trembling associated with his illness. And these albums contain the first ideas for Los Caprichos, his masterful satire against society’s vices and customs, published in January 1799. According to his first biographer, L. Matheron, they were conceived in the context of the duchesses of Alba and Osuna.
Goya spent much of 1796 in Andalusia: first, Cadiz—according to Moratín, he had his own house there—and then Seville, where news of his health was not very good. He visited the duchess of Alba in Sanlúcar and painted the famous portrait of her dressed in black (New York, the Hispanic Society, 1797). By early 1797 he was back in Madrid, where he resigned his post as the Academy’s director of painting because “that day he saw that its problems, rather than ceasing, had multiplied.” Freedom from academic responsibilities determined the most prolific years in Goya’s life, when he made exceptional portraits of Jovellanos (1797- Madrid, Museo del Prado) and La Tirana (1799 – Madrid, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando), as well as The Nude Maja, which is documented in Godoy’s palace in 1800; and the Clothed Maja, which is posterior, and is documented in December 1798. He also painted The Arrest of Christ for Toledo Cathedral and a set of new royal portraits: María Luisa wearing a Mantilla, Charles IV as a Hunter and his Equestrian Portrait of María Luisa from autumn 1799.
The 1790s culminated in Goya’s appointment as First Chamber Painter, the zenith of his courtly career. Signed on October 31, 1799 by Prime Minister Mariano de Urquijo, this appointment insured him a salary of 50,000 reales de vellón. That day, Goya wrote his last missive to Zapater, who died in 1803: “the Monarchs are crazy about your friend.” Their patronage, and Godoy’s, continued into the first years of the 19th century, and Goya initiated them in June 1800 with his spectacular Family of Charles IV. He had moved into his new house at no. 35, calle Valverde after selling his previous house to Godoy, whose service is patent in works such as Portrait of the Countess of Chinchón (April 1800 – Madrid, Museo del Prado), his portrait of the minister during the War of the Oranges (1800 – Madrid, Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando), and in the large allegorical canvases for decorating his palace (ca. 1802-2804), including the Allegory of Time and History (Stockholm, Nationalgalleriet). Goya’s production of private portraits was also especially rich in those years. That is when he defined the uncommonly varied aristocratic portrait, with likenesses of The Count and Countess of Fernán Núñez (1803 – Madrid, Fernán Núñez Collection), The Marchioness of Villafranca Painting her Husband (1804 – Madrid, Museo del Prado), The Marchioness of Santa Cruz (1804 – Madrid, Museo del Prado) and the Marquis of San Adrián (1804 – Pamplona, Museo de Bellas Artes). At the same time, the rise of bourgeois society called for portraits of that new social class, which Goya painted from the very start in more intimate, sober and realistic works characterized by acute psychological insight. These include depictions of painter Bartolomé Sureda and his wife, Teresa Sureda (1804-1805 – Washington, National Gallery), Antonio Porcel (1806 – Buenos Aires, Jockey Club, destroyed), of actor Isidoro Máiquez (Chicago, Art Institute) and of retired actress Antonia Zárate (ca. 1808 – Dublin, National Gallery).
In June of 1803, Goya purchased a new house at no. 7, calle de los Reyes, although he never actually lived there. On July 7, in a letter to Miguel Cayetano Soler, he gave the copper plates from his Caprichos to the king, along with two hundred printed copies in exchange for a pension of 12,000 reales for his son, Javier, who wanted to study painting. Goya was preparing his son’s future, although there is no authoritative evidence that he ever actually became a painter. On July 8, 1805, Javier married Gumersinda Goicoechea, the daughter of merchant Martín Miguel de Goichechea of Madrid. Goya painted splendid full-length portraits of both that are now in the Noailles collection. In 1806 his only grandson, Mariano, was born, and four years later, in 1810, Goya painted him elegantly dressed and pulling on a toy cart (Madrid, Larios Collection). It was at the beginning of the 18th century that Goya began receiving praise for the high level of his art. In 1805, poet Manuel José Quintana placed him above Rafael de Urbina and predicted his universal fame for centuries to come. Goya must have continued with his drawing albums, which are difficult to date accurately, as the compositions relate to subjects that run from the beginning of the 18th century through 1820, like those in Albums C, D and E. Goya remained in Madrid during the war against Napoleon (1808-1814) and, as a palace official, he took an oath of obedience to José Napoleon. He was awarded the Order of Spain, but never went to collect it, and he painted portraits of some of the occupation government’s ministers and authorities. As chamber painter to the new king, he furnished lists of paintings from the royal collection for exhibition in the museum that Napoleon had created in Paris, although there is very little documentation of his activity in that period, and numerous gaps. Still, after his wife, Josefa Bayeu, died at the end of the war (June 20, 1812), an inventory of their assets listed numerous works that reveal his incessant activity. He also worked on the etchings for The Disasters of War, denounced the violence suffered by a defenseless population, and continued work on his Tauromaquia, which was published in 1816. In February and March 1814, the Regency commissioned him to paint the two large canvases depicting the events of 2 and 3 May 1808 in Madrid (Madrid, Museo del Prado): Spanish patriots’ brutal uprising against their invaders, and the French soldiers’ merciless response.
In May, Goya emerged unscathed from the purge of palace functionaries who had served the French occupation government. After recovering his salary and rights, he began painting for the Crown and its high dignitaries again (Portrait of Ferdinand VII with Royal Robes, Madrid, Museo del Prado; and Portrait of the Duke of San Carlos (Zaragoza, Museo de Bellas Artes). In 1815, he began to distance himself from court—the king preferred the work of Vicente López—and focused more on his private activity, painting portraits (Portrait of the X Duke of Osuna, Bayonne, Musée Bonnat), images for the Church, which had been a faithful patron since his youth (Saints Justa and Rufina (Seville, Sacristy of the Chalices, Seville Cathedral); and The Last Communion of Saint Joseph of Calasanz (Madrid, Piarist Fathers); drawing in Albums C, D and E, completing the final plates for the Desastres, the so-called Emphatic Caprichos, and the Disparates.
Goya was still living on calle Valverde when, in 1819, he acquired a country house on the outskirts of Madrid. Known as “la Quinta del Sordo”, it was home to his “Black Paintings.” Leocadia Zorrilla and her two children had been living in the painter’s house since 1815, where she acted as housekeeper. She was the cousin of Goya’s daughter-in-law and there are some indications, as well as references by Moratín when they were already in Bordeaux, that she was Goya’s companion, although there is no definitive confirmation.
On September 23, 1823 Goya donated the Quinta to his grandson, Mariano. And on May 2 of the following year, he sought the king’s permission to travel to France to take the mineral waters in Plombières (Vosges). Goya may have decided to go into exile after the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis arrived in Spain in April, 1823 to restore the king’s absolute power. And indeed, many of his friends and relatives had been obliged to leave. There is, however, no clear documentation of his departure, as his trips to Madrid from Bordeaux between 1824 and 1828, as well as his letters to the king, requesting leave and retirement, do not indicate that he was subject to persecution. In February 1824, Goya assigned a general power of attorney to Gabriel Ramiro to administer his salary as palace functionary, and in June, having received the king’s leave, he left for Bordeaux. Moratín recounted the artist’s arrival in a letter to their shared friend, the abbot Melón (July 27, 1824), describing him as “deaf, old, clumsy and weak, and with no knowledge whatsoever of French […] and so happy and eager to see the world.” Goya immediately continued on to Paris, where documents by the police, who monitored Spanish political exiles, state that he lived alone, walked around public places and visited the monuments. He may have intended to visit the Salon, which had been delayed until August that year.
In Paris, Goya painted surprisingly modern and superb portraits of the exiled politician, Joaquín María Ferrer and his wife. In September, he returned to Bordeaux, where he joined Leocadia Zorilla and her children. While he had some bouts of illness in those years, he was still able to make four trips to Madrid to resolve problems and probably to visit his son and grandson. Moratín kept his colleagues in Madrid regularly informed as to Goya’s life and health: “Goya, with seventy-nine years well lived, and the consequent ailments, knows neither what he hopes for, nor what he wants […] he likes the city, the countryside, the climate, the food, the independence and the tranquility he enjoys.” He only painted portraits of a few friends, including Moratín (Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes), Jacques Galos (Philadelphia, Barnes Foundation) and finally, just a few months before he died, his grandson Mariano (Dallas, Meadows Museum), and merchant Juan Bautista de Muguiro (Madrid, Museo del Prado). The rest of his activity focused on intimate, small-format works such as a series of miniatures on ivory, of which a few are known. Their singular, expressive and mordant figures are rendered with free and powerfully expressive brushstrokes that Goya described as closer to “Velázquez’s brushes than to those of Mengs.” His time in Bordeaux is probably best defined by his works on paper, including the black-pencil drawings in Albums G and H, with scenes drawn from reality and others based on memories or subjects that had always interested him, such as satires against the clergy, trickery or madness, and figures distorted with an aesthetic that foreshadows 20th-century expressionism. He also became fascinated with lithography, which had recently been invented, and at Cyprien Gaulon’s establishment, he printed his Bulls of Bordeaux: impressive visions of the “national feast” (bullfighting) that are striking in their large size and brutal condemnation of human violence, which had concerned him throughout his life. When he died, he was appreciated only by the small group of friends and family that faithfully accompanied him to the end, as his profoundly individual art had little to do with that period’s fashions. He died on the night of 15 to 16 April, 1828, as Leocadia Zorrilla described with chilling realism, and he was buried at the Chartreuse cemetery, in the same tomb as his in-law, Martín Miguel de Goicoechea. Years later, what were believed to be his remains were moved to Madrid, where they rest at the hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida, beneath the frescoes he had painted in 1789 (Manuela B. Mena Marqués).

His portrait by Vicente López Portaña is catalogued as work P00864 at the Museo del Prado.