ELEGANCE & EMOTION

FRANCISCO JOSE DE GOYA Y LUCIENTES was one of the most dramatic of the old masters, and one of the most unpredictable. An artisan's son who lived during the bloody days of the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, he grew up to be a darling of the court, though he often painted his benefactors to look like vain simpletons. When Napoleon conquered Spain Goya first curried favor with the victors, then commemorated their outrages with a series of compassionate etchings. Last week an exhibition of 81 of the master's works was on display in Richmond's lively Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, supplemented by a push-button movie on Goya's life and works.

Visitors to last week's show got a good idea of Goya's enormous scope and variety. Though his works always had an underpinning of fiercely honest realism, they ranged from elegant portraiture, through caricature, to expressionist outpourings of violent emotion and surrealist fantasies. Goya's Majo is a mysterious dandy painted in a style of courtly elegance. His expressionist St. Peter Repentant, roughly and swiftly constructed of broad brushstrokes, is a rocklike old man in an agony of remorse after thrice betraying Christ. In his besieged City on a Rock, the master turns surrealist and dreamlike, and in the sky a flight of tiny birdmen zoon like fantastic fighter planes.

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