Francisco Goya spent the first half of his career as Spain’s most celebrated court painter — bright tapestry designs, flattering royal portraits, cheerful scenes of aristocratic life. Then illness left him deaf, the Napoleonic Wars devastated Spain, and the man who had painted kings began painting nightmares. The Black Paintings — Saturn devouring his son, witches’ sabbaths, screaming faces — were never meant to be seen. He painted them directly onto the walls of his own house.

This episode traces Goya from his Aragonese childhood through the court appointments, the deafness that transformed his vision, the Disasters of War etchings, and the Black Paintings that turned his dining room into the most terrifying gallery in art history.

• Goya’s rise from provincial painter to court artist for the Spanish Bourbon monarchy
• The mysterious illness that left him permanently deaf and transformed his artistic vision
• The Disasters of War — the unflinching etchings of Napoleonic atrocities in Spain
• The Black Paintings on his dining room walls and why he never showed them to anyone