In 1792, a famous Spanish portraitist fell victim to an illness that left him permanently deaf. This was the event that proved the turning-point in the career of Francisco Jose Goya y Lucientes. Trapped in his silent world, Goya's portraiture climbed to new heights of achievement, but it was his increasingly dark images that are most appreciated today. The sheer horror of much of Goya's later work was unprecedented in Western Art, and it is these paintings and etchings that secure his status as a giant of the Romantic Age.