Goya painted the Spanish royal family, including that of Charles IV of Spain and of Ferdinand VII. His thematic range extended from merry festivals for tapestries, draft cartoons, to scenes of war and human debasement. This evolution reflects the darkening of his temper. Modern physicians suspect that the lead in his pigments poisoned him and caused his deafness after 1792. Near the end of his life, he became reclusive and produced frightening and obscure paintings of insanity, madness, and fantasy, while the style of the Black Paintings prefigures the expressionist movement.
