Francisco Goya, El Greco, Velazquez, Picasso - this is the pantheon of Spanish painters. Each was a genius, immune to convention, who rewrote the rules of painting in his time. Here, the Spanish art historian Jose Gudiol explores Goya's complex character and technique, grounding his discussion in the common vicissitudes of the artist's life - a childhood of poverty, humiliation in the face of the academic painters of Madrid, an illness that left him dead and isolated from society at mid-llife. This prodigiously productive artist, who finally attained the post of First Court Painter and created some of art's greatest portraits, plunged privately into an abyss of despair, out of which he brought some of the most terrifying works of the nineteenth century - painting and prints evoking the disaster of war and the irrepressible voices of the subconscious.