Famous Paintings Reviewed

Famous Paintings: The Third of May 1808

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An art history blog post from Famous Paintings Reviewed.

After researching which famous paintings would be included in Masterpiece Cards, I discovered that three famous painters were most often cited, Picasso (1881-1973), Titian (ca.1488-1576), and Goya.  Citations from some forty art historians rank these three as the most historically influential painters in the 5 1/2 century span from Renaissance art through Pop art paintings. 

The early years of Francisco Goya (1746-1828), born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, were undistinguished.  He wasn't a childhood painting prodigy;he clashed with and left his painting teacher, Anton Raphael Mengs; he was dismissive of and unmoved by the artwork of antiquity or the Renaissance (likely a factor behind his two rejections for admission to the Royal Academy of Fine Art).

But he was brimming with ambition, perseverance, and confidence.  Following in the footsteps of his mentor, Velazquez, Goya similarly became pintor del rey to Charles IV of Spain in 1789 and First Court Painter in 1799, subsequently painting some of the most famous artwork of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It is impossible to discuss famous paintings by Goya without acknowledging the historical period in which he worked, the era and ensuing turmoil of the Napoleonic wars.  Initially, Goya was a proponent of the political enlightenment and freedoms promised by Napoleon and the French Revolution of 1789.  By 1808, though, Goya wrote in his diary:

No one is innocent once he has seen what I have seen.  I witnessed how the noblest ideals of freedom and progress were transformed into lances, sabres, and bayonets.  Arson, looting and rape, all supposed to bring a New Order, in reality only exchanged the garrotte for the gallows. 

On May 2, 1808, Spanish citizens in Madrid revolted against the occupying army of Napoleon.

The following day, Napoleon's forces exacted revenge by executing hundreds of rebels along with innocent bystanders.  Goya captured this horrific day in The Third of May 1808, which he created only after King Ferdinand VII was restored to the Spanish throne in 1814.

Nearly a third of the canvas is a black, looming, menancing sky whose weight seems to amplify the painting's tension.  Goya depicts the French soldiers as virtual automatons in identical stances and uniforms, all anonymous and faceless. In Goya's portrayal, they become universal purveyors of cruelty and injustice. The victims, conversely, are depicted in wrenching detail.  The white-shirted man holds his arms upward, recalling Christ's crucifixion; the victim in the left foreground, prone in pooled blood, similarly echoes this stance. Terror is rampant on the victims' faces as they witness the killings at point-blank range. The presence  of the friar, who likely wouldn't have participated in the revolt, is a stark reminder that many innocent Spainards were killed. 

In a nod to Goya's contemporary, Jean-Louis David (1748-1825), the author Robert Cumming (Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored a d Explained) observes that the pose of Goya's soldiers

is the pose, in reverse, of the brothers' pose in The Oath of the Horatti. Hmmm... intentional or coincidental?