Also around this same time Goya began taking the first crucial step in his courtly career: The Count of Floridablanca, favourite of King Carlos III, commissioned him to paint his portrait, and he also became an intimate with the Crown Prince Don Luis, and went to live in his house. A little later he also became friendly with the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whom he painted, as well as the King and all the most notable personages of the kingdom. In 1789 he was nominated a court painter to the new king, Charles IV.

A more important turning point in his career than any of these appointments, however, was the mysterious and traumatic illness he experienced in 1792. It left him stone deaf, and while convalescing in 1793 he painted a series of paintings of 'fantasy and invention' in order, as he said, 'to occupy an imagination mortified by the contemplation of my sufferings'. This marks the beginning of his preoccupation with the morbid, bizarre, and menacing that was to be such a feature of his mature work. He began to populate itself with feelings, longings, and ghosts. His character became more withdrawn and introspective and his entire vitality of life was now directed to his painting. He then began his first of his great series of engravings that were issued in 1799. The set (executed c. 1793-98) consists of eighty-two plates in etching reinforced with aquatint, and their humour is constantly overshadowed by an element of nightmare. Technically revealing the influence of Rembrandt they feature savagely satirical attacks on social customs and abuses of the Church, with elements of the macabre in scenes of witchcraft and diabolism.

In 1795 Goya succeeded Bayeu as director of painting at the Academy of San Fernando and in 1799 he was appointed First Court Painter, though his bursts of bad temperament and frustration at his deafness fuelled his frustration with the society in which he lived.

Around this time Goya, whose nude paintings were declared too erotic, led him to be summoned before the Spanish Inquisition. Popular legend has it that the paintings represent the Duchess of Alba, the beautiful widow whose relationship with Goya caused scandal in Madrid.

Goya retained his appointment of court painter under Joseph Bonaparte during the French occupation of Spain (from 1808-1814), but his activity as a painter of court and society decreased, and he was torn between his welcome for the regime as a liberal and his abhorrence as a patriot against foreign military rule. The death of his wife Pepas in 1812 sent him into a depression and soon he realized his dream of isolating himself when he purchased a house on the outskirts of Madrid, which became known as the ‘House of the Deaf’. There he closed himself off from all he knew and began producing the famous Black Pictures, a series showing all his genius in dark and terrible visions. These were painted almost entirely in blacks, greys and browns and included the famous painting ‘Saturn Devouring One of his Sons.'

In 1824 Goya obtained permission from Ferdinand VII to leave the country for reasons of health and after spending some time in Paris, he settled at Bordeaux. He made two brief visits to Spain, on the first of which, in1826, he officially resigned as court painter. In his last years in France he took up the new medium of lithography while his paintings moved towards a style, which foreshadowed that of the Impressionists. He worked alone, isolated and feverishly creating works of art. His health failing he passed away on April 16, 1828 and left behind the legacy of one of the most powerful and original artists in Europe.