He painted—not the hellscape that was outside his window, but the hellscape that was eternal, the same view that Goya had.

No matter the hour, whenever I stopped by his studio unannounced, I would find him working. We had his palette table put on casters to give him more mobility and freedom. When he thought I wasn’t looking, he would lean on the table, as if it were a walker, and push himself toward his painting. Whenever his age overcame me and I would be on the brink of heartbreak, the stroke his brush left behind on the canvas would be no less muscular and vibrant than it had ever been.

I came to believe what Goya’s housekeeper must have believed each time she returned from the butcher and saw the old master feverishly painting day after week after month: She was witnessing a miracle.