Francisco Goya painted kings, queens, duchesses, and children dressed in silk. He became one of Spain’s most celebrated royal court painters.

Then he painted witches, executions, war crimes, mutilated bodies—and Saturn devouring his own child.

So what happened?

In this episode of Art Happens: The Divine Mess of Art History, presented by J-Squared Atelier, James follows Goya’s extraordinary journey from cheerful tapestry designs and glittering royal portraits to Los Caprichos, The Disasters of War, The Third of May 1808, and the haunting Black Paintings he created on the walls of his own home.

Along the way, Goya survived a life-altering illness, lost his hearing, witnessed Napoleon’s brutal invasion of Spain, and watched reason, power, and political order collapse around him. His art stopped flattering humanity and began exposing what it was capable of—superstition, cruelty, organized violence, and monsters that did not always need wings.

Was Goya losing faith in humanity, or was he simply one of the first artists willing to show us what humanity really looked like?

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J-Squared Aterlier (J2Atelier)
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