The "Black Paintings" from Quinta del sordo

Goya proceeded to decorate the "Quinta del sordo" with some of the most intense, disturbing images ever painted. Executed in oil directly on the plaster walls, these so-called "black paintings" represent the culmination of Goya's artistic efforts. They combine the freedom, or "Capricho", and eerie imagery of his etchings with the scale and decorative purpose of the tapestry cartoons he executed early in his career. After almost two hundred years, they retain their capacity to reduce the viewer to shocked silence.

  thanks to plep