Category: Goya

My Daily Art Display featured painting for today is the second of a set of two works by Goya entitled The Third of May 1808.  If you have just come to this website I suggest you read yesterday’s blog first as it is a prequel to this painting.

Yesterday we looked at Goya’s painting entitled The Second of May 1808 which was a depiction of an uprising of the people of Madrid against the Napoleonic forces including some of Napoleon’s fiercest fighter from the French Imperial Guard, the Egyptian Mamalukes.  The rebellion was put down after several hours of fierce fighting with loss of lives on both sides.  The French commander, Murat, was in no doubt as to the fate of the captured rebels unequivocally stating:

”…The population of Madrid, led astray, has given itself to revolt and murder. French blood has flowed. It demands vengeance. All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot…”

Today’s painting is a depiction by Goya of the promised French reprisals.  Hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up on the night of May 2^nd and the next day and taken to various locations and executed by firing squads.  The painting is based on the executions which took place at one of these sites, the hill of Principe Pio on the outskirts of Madrid.

The scene is set at night.  The menacing sky is pitch-black and there is not a star in sight.  This alone adds menace to the painting.   Nearly a third of the canvas is black.   This blackened background darkens the painting but we can just make out the silhouette of the town and another group of people which may be inquisitive on-lookers or may even be the next batch of rebels destined for the firing squad.   The scene is only lit up by the light from the lantern which lies on the ground between the two sets of men. See how the rays of light from the lantern and the shadows form a dividing line on the ground between the killers and those to be killed.   The condemned are lit up by the lantern’s light. The lantern as a source of illumination in art was extensively used by Baroque artists, and later perfected by the Master of chiaroscuro, Caravaggio.

Before us, we see two groups of men, on the left hand side of the painting we see the rebels and, across a narrow gap, on the right hand side of the painting we see a line of French soldiers, with their shako headgear,  engulfed in shadow, rigidly poised with their guns with fixed bayonets  pointing at the condemned.  The soldiers, almost like robots, are solidly lined with immaculate military precision whereas the condemned are crumbling before their very eyes.   We are seeing the soldiers almost from behind and the faces of these executioners are hidden from view.  Goya has probably painted them like this to emphasise that these men are simply dehumanized perpetrators of brutality and tyranny.

Goya has carefully painted the condemned as individuals each showing different reactions to their fate.  One stares out defiantly at his executioners and another, a monk, we see with his hands clasped before him, praying for his soul.  The central figure within the bunch of rebels, with his white shirt and yellow trousers is lit up by the lantern and is the main focus of the painting.  His face is racked with terror and we see him kneeling amidst the bloodied corpses of his executed colleagues. His plain white shirt contrasts against his sun-burnt face, which gives the impression that he had been used to working outdoors in the fields as a simple labourer.   Look at his stance.

His arms are flung wide in what must be presumed as an act of defiance or maybe it is terror.  Note how Goya has depicted this.  His arms are spread as if he has been crucified and on close inspection of the palm of his right hand we see the marks of the stigmata, the bodily marks, in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ.  This was Goya’s way of portraying that this man and his comrades were martyrs, innocents battling against the persecution of a foreign power.  This condemned man was the very man we saw in yesterday’s painting, holding his dagger aloft about to thrust it into a Mamaluke soldier which he is dragging from his horse.

On the ground in front of the line of condemned men lie the blood-soaked bodies of those already executed.   Face down in a pool of his own blood is the rebel we witnessed in yesterday’s painting, who had just run his dagger into the shoulders of the white horse.   To the right of the white-shirted man we see a group of cowering rebels awaiting their fate.  They have been marched up the hill and have now come face to face with their fate.  They can hardly bear to look at the scene before them.

By the time of the painting’s conception, the public imagination had made the rioters symbols of heroism and patriotism. The two paintings by Goya were not glorious scenes of a great victorious battle but simple acts of anonymous heroism in the face of defeat.   Although I have highlighted the two paintings of the series it is thought that at one time the set may have comprised of four works – the two I have featured and one depicting the revolt at the royal palace, the other being a painting depicting the defence of the artillery barracks.  The fact that these latter two paintings have disappeared points to the possibility that they were destroyed by Spanish officials who were unhappy with the depiction of the popular uprising.

The painting received a mixed reception when first exhibited a good many years later, with critics pointing out its technical flaws with its perspective and the lack of realism.  Critics pointed out that the distance between executioners and victims was far too small and the fact that the power of the shot hitting its victim would probably propel the rebel backwards and not forwards as shown in the painting.  The other lack of realism lies in the fact that in reality the executions were carried out in the day time and not at night but I am sure Goya chose night as the time of day for his painting to make the painting more spectacular.   Other critics come to Goya’s defence pointing out that the painting was not supposed to be technically accurate but the way the artist had depicted the scene and his use of chiaroscuro added to overall effectiveness of the painting.

My Daily Art Display featured paintings for today and tomorrow are both by Francisco Goya and they depict events which happened in Madrid on two consecutive days in 1808.  I am guessing that most of you will have seen one or both of the paintings but may not have realised the connection between the two.  Today I am going to look at the painting entitled The Second of May 1808 which Goya completed in 1814, just a couple of months before he finished the companion work entitled The Third of May 1808.  So what happened on these two days that made the Spanish Romantic painter, Goya want to pictorially record the events.

I need to go back a little from 1808 and go over the run-up to the terrible events of May 1808.   The main protagonists in this story were France and Spain.  In 1799, in France, Napoleon Bonaparte had declared himself First Consul of the French Republic and five years later he was crowned Emperor of France.  Meanwhile in Spain King Charles IV had reigned supreme since 1788.  He had proved a weak and ineffectual leader who left the governing of the country to his wife, Maria Luisa of Parma and his Prime Minister, Manuel de Godoy, a wealthy nobleman who had taken office in 1792.

Napoleon seeing an opportunity of gaining more territory suggested to Charles that they join forces, attack Spain’s neighbour, Portugal and divide up the conquered land between themselves, one third to France, one third to Spain and one third to the Spanish prime minister Godoy, who would be given the title of Prince of Algarve.  Godoy was seduced by such an idea and persuaded the king to agree to Napoleon’s plan.  Unfortunately Napoleon had an ulterior motive and a different scheme in mind when, in November 1807, 23,000 French troops marched into Spain unopposed under the guise of supporting the Spanish army prior to the joint attack on Portugal.   Napoleon had hatched a plan with Charles’ eldest son Ferdinand that France would, with his help, overthrow the Spanish monarchy, which of course was his father, and the Spanish government of Godoy and Ferdinand would become King of Spain.

It was not until February 1808 that it became apparent to the Spanish what Napoleon’s true plans had been but even so the French army met with little resistance.  Charles IV and Ferdinand his son were, at the insistence of Napoleon, in the French city of Bayonne for discussions on the terms of the abdication.  At the beginning of May 1808, the French commander and Napoleon’s, brother-in-law, Joaquim Murat, tried to forcibly move the daughter and the youngest son of Charles, the Infante Francisco de Paulato from Madrid to Bayonne and this was the catalyst for the rebellion of the local Spanish population and the fierce street fighting in Madrid on May 2^nd.

On that day, a crowd gathered in front of the Royal Palace in Madrid. Those gathered entered the palace grounds in an attempt to prevent the removal of the Infanta.  Marshal Murat sent a battalion of grenadiers from the Imperial Guard to the palace along with artillery detachments. The latter opened fire on the assembled crowd, and this sparked the start of the rebellion which soon spread to other parts of the city.

What followed was street fighting in different areas of Madrid as the poorly armed population confronted the French troops. Murat had quickly moved the majority of his troops into the city and there was heavy fighting around the Puerta del Sol and the Puerta de Toledo.   Martial Law in the city was then imposed by Murat and the French commander assumed full control of the administration. Slowly but surely, the French took back control of the city, and many hundreds of people died in the fighting.   There were Spanish troops in the city at the time but they were confined to their barracks and with the exception of one brigade did as they were commanded.   The bloody rebellion lasted several hours before the French troops recovered control of the city.

My featured painting today, The Second of May 1808, sometimes known as The Charge of the Mamelukes, depicts the street fighting that took place at the Calle de Alcala near the Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid.  The Mamelukes, which were a fierce band of Muslim fighters in Napoleon’s French Imperial Guard, charged the crowd and the ensuing savagery was captured by Goya in his painting.  Goya did not actually paint the picture until 1814 at which time the French army had been expelled from Spain.  He applied to the ruling council of Spain for financial aid to paint the picture as he put it:

‘…to perpetuate with the brush the most notable and heroic actions or scenes of our glorious insurrection against the tyrant of Europe…”

There is differing opinions as to whether Goya actually witnessed the scenes of the rebellion at first hand.  This massive painting measuring 265cms x 345cms (almost 9ft by 11ft) depicts the bloody skirmish.  Goya chose to depict the people of Madrid armed just with knives and rough weapons as unknown heroes attacking the might of the Mamelukes and a French cavalry officer.  The whole painting depicts a scene of chaos which in some ways stirs up a feeling of realism and authenticity.  The two figures you need to focus on are the man who is plunging the knife into the thigh of the white horse and the man who is at the rear of the horse and who is just about to plunge his knife into a Mameluke warrior who he has dragged from the horse.  Why?  In tomorrow’s painting The Third of May 2008 we will again see these two men and what happened to them as a result of their deeds.

Art historians have been somewhat critical of Goya’s handling of the painting stating that the horses appear static and the figures in the painting seem posed.  Of the two paintings, the Third of May 1808 is considered the better and more memorable

As a footnote, during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930’s, when Madrid was bombed by Nationalist troops, the Republican government decided to evacuate the paintings from the Prado. A truck carrying Goya’s paintings had an accident, and The Second of May was badly damaged: there were tears and even pieces missing. When the painting was later repaired, some damage was left unrepaired at its left border to remind viewers of the events of the civil war.