It was a horrific painting. The focal point was a wild-eyed monster, inserting a bloody, headless corpse into its mouth.

‘Are you sure this was created 200 years ago?’ My colleague whispered in my ear. ‘It almost looks like an abstract painting of a concentration camp. Or maybe a cartoon by Jeffrey Dahmer.’ My colleague's comment, a reference to the late cannibalistic American serial killer, was with great amusement overheard by others in the auditorium. The comic relief was welcome, because of the grim nature of the subject – the probable deaths of famous painters. On the screen was a slide of a painting by Fransisco de Goya, created during one of his ‘black periods.’ I shuffled uneasily in my chair.

‘The name is “Saturn Eating His Children,”’ the lecturer began. ‘It is an amazing example of Goya's artistic transformation, which began when he was middle-aged.’

The speaker described the fact that prior to his 46th birthday, Goya was a talented but absolutely conventional painter. His paintings were charming, picturesque, predictable, boring. But something happened to Goya that almost killed him. His brush with death unleashed a genius, perhaps a monster, and Goya would never paint the same way again. That something, and its cumulative effects on his art, was the subject of the lecture. I still found it difficult to watch.