Short answers, pulled from the story.
Francisco Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker who lived from 1746 to 1828. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and is often called the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.
Francisco Goya was born on the 30th of March 1746 in Fuendetodos, a village in Aragon, Spain. His family had moved there that year from the city of Zaragoza, and his father Jose worked as a gilder.
Goya was left deaf by a severe and undiagnosed illness between late 1792 and early 1793. Proposed explanations include viral encephalitis, miniature strokes from high blood pressure, Meniere's disease, and cumulative lead poisoning from the lead white he ground for his paintings.
The Black Paintings are 14 works Goya executed in oil directly onto the plaster walls of his house, La Quinta del Sordo, between 1819 and 1823. He never intended them to be exhibited and likely never spoke of them; around 1874 they were transferred to canvas by Baron Frederic Emile d'Erlanger.
The Disasters of War is a series of etchings Goya created in response to the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising and the Peninsular War of 1808-1814. The series was not published until 1863-35 years after his death, when it was considered politically safe to distribute works criticizing both the French and the restored Bourbon monarchy.
Francisco Goya died and was buried on the 16th of April 1828, aged 82, in the French city of Bordeaux. He had retired there in 1824, accompanied by Leocadia Weiss, and died following a stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side.