From Romantic Revolution Books, this evening...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
The life of the Spanish artist, Francisco Goya, fits perfectly into the heart of the Romantic Movement, pivoting around the year 1800. Goya pursued and became famous for hugely disparate subjects, making his name (and position) as a portrait painter at the center of the Spanish royal court, but, during and after the invasion of Spain by Napoleon, and the fierce and bloody Spanish resistance, he painted first his famous and unforgettable scenes of war--and then turned increasingly to grotesque horrors of war cruelty and monstrous inhumanity.
To top it all, and on a lighter note, he is credited with painting the first explicit depiction of pubic hair in a Western painting, his "The Nude Maja." It is speculated to depict the Duchess of Alba. The Catholic Church in Spain made its depiction unthinkable in Goya's lifetime, and the painting had adventures before it ever was seen in public.
It is not surprising that the Romantic movement achieved this "first": indeed, the painting is also characterized as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art." For "profane," here, read "unashamedly of this world," because this was the first nude not presented under the cover of being allegorical or mythological.
I speculate that having seen war up close, with scenes stripped of all possible moral or even comprehensible meaning, Goya began to see a world unveiled and unmediated by an imposed higher meaning. And so painted a beautiful and sensual woman simply as she was, without lofty airs... Or so I like speculate.