Did poor eyesight influence Goya's late works? Medicine and art history in search for an interpretation of Goya's late paintings.

Purpose: The aim of this article is to 'determine' the scope of Goya's eyesight difficulties and assess the extent to which those difficulties might explain his style of painting in the last years of his life.

Methods: We analyse the correspondence and late works of the Aragonese painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), who has been admired for his use of colour, his energetic loose brushstrokes, his disregard for details and his bold compositions, as well as for his different artistic styles throughout his life.

Results: The evolution of Goya's style of painting in his later works seems to have been the consequence of an eyesight condition, probably age-related cataracts at an advanced stage.