The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, located on the Calle de Alcalá in the centre of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal academies in the Instituto de España.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.