Francisco Goya spent forty years as Spain's court painter while quietly filling private sketchbooks with witches, madness, and war, and critic Robert Hughes uses that split to structure this profile. Hughes discloses his own stake early: a near-fatal car accident sharpened what had been an admiration into something closer to obsession with Goya's darker imagery. The film follows him through Aragon, Goya's home region, and into Madrid's galleries, palaces, and churches, where he stands in front of the actual canvases, including "The Third of May," "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," "Witches in the Air," and the paired portraits of "The Clothed Maja" and "The Nude Maja." He traces Goya's shift from flattering aristocratic patrons and the Duchess of Alba to recording atrocity as something close to a war reporter. American painter Leon Golub joins him on camera to talk through why Goya's work still unsettles working artists. Hughes closes without tidy summary, arguing that looking hard at Goya means looking hard at ourselves.