Goya in hell: the bloodbath that explains his most harrowing work

His horrifyingly bleak Black Paintings are said to be a result of Goya going deaf. But is there another reason? As the National Gallery show opens, Jonathan Jones finds the shocking answer in the artist’s hometown of Zaragoza

A dog is drowning in quicksand. Its grey head pokes defiantly out of the brown sludge, even as a dead yellow sky above insists there is no hope. No saviour. In the next painting, supernatural shapers of the world reveal themselves, but they are grinning hags floating eerily above a lifeless landscape in the dead of night – the Fates, arbitrary and uncaring. Over on the other side of the gallery is a paternal god, of sorts, but it is the ancient deity Saturn and he is eating one of his own children, as if chomping on churros at a Spanish bar, with blood instead of chocolate sauce.

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