The Third of May 1808 in Madrid (commonly known as The Third of May 1808)The Museo del Prado entitles the work El 3 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid: los fusilamientos en la montaña del Príncipe Pío and also known, in Spanish, as or ,Prado, p. 141. "The third of May 1808 in Madrid; the shootings on the Prince Pio Hill". See Príncipe Pío for the location. or , is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of Madrid in 1808 at the start of the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's own suggestion shortly after the ousting of the French occupation and the restoration of King Ferdinand VII.
The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a ground-breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May marks a clear break from convention. By diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era.Licht, pp. 116–127. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, it is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention".Clark, p. 130.
The Third of May 1808 inspired Gerald Holtom's peace sign and a number of later major paintings, including a series by Édouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso's Massacre in Korea and Guernica. The painting currently resides in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Background
Napoleon I of France declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on November 10, 1799, and crowned himself Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, the country was politically and strategically important to French interests. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV, was internationally regarded as ineffectual. Even in his own court he was seen as a "half-wit king who renounces cares of state for the satisfaction of hunting",Connell, pp. 145–146. and a cuckold unable to control his energetic wife, Maria Luisa of Parma.Hagen, Rose-Marie and Hagen, Rainer. Francisco Goya, 1746–1828. Köln: Taschen, 2007. pp. 28–29. Napoleon took advantage of the weak king by suggesting the two nations conquer and divide Portugal, with France and Spain each taking a third of the spoils, and the final third going to the Spanish prime minister Manuel de Godoy, along with the title Prince of the Algarve. Godoy was seduced, and accepted the French offer. He failed, however, to grasp Napoleon's true intentions, and was unaware that his new ally and co-sovereign, the king's son Ferdinand VII of Spain, was using the invasion merely as a ploy to seize the Spanish parliament and throne. Ferdinand intended not only that Godoy be killed during the impending power struggle, but also that the lives of his own parents be sacrificed.
Under the guise of reinforcing the Spanish armies and marching over Lisbon to capture the members of the House of Braganza before the eventual transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil, 23,000 French troops entered Spain unopposed in November 1807.Baines, Edward. History of the Wars of the French Revolution. Philadelphia: McCarty and Davis, 1835. p. 65. Even when Napoleon's intentions became clear the following February, the occupying forces found little resistance apart from isolated actions in disconnected areas, including Zaragoza.Connell, pp. 145–148. Napoleon's principal commander, Marshal Joachim Murat, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers more progressive and competent than the Bourbons, and Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte was to be made king.Licht, p. 109. After Napoleon convinced Ferdinand to return Spanish rule to Charles IV, the latter was left with no choice but to abdicate, on March 19, 1808, in favor of Joseph Bonaparte.
Although the Spanish people had accepted foreign monarchs in the past, they deeply resented the new French ruler. A French agent in Madrid wrote that "Spain is different. The Spaniards have a noble and generous character, but they have a tendency to ferocity and cannot bear to be treated as a conquered nation. Reduced to despair, they would be prepared to unleash the most terrible and courageous rebellion, and the most vicious excesses."Fraser, Ronald. Napoleon's Cursed War: Popular Resistance in the Spanish Peninsular War, p. 30. Verso, 2008. On May 2, 1808, provoked by news of the planned removal to France of the last members of the Spanish royal family, the people of Madrid rebelled in the Dos de Mayo Uprising. A proclamation issued that day to his troops by Marshal Murat read: "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."Cowans, Jon. Modern Spain: A Documentary History. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Goya commemorated the uprising in his The Second of May, which depicts a cavalry charge against the rebels in the Puerta del Sol square in the center of Madrid, the site of several hours of fierce combat.Licht, p. 112. Much the better known of the pair, The Third of May illustrates the French reprisals: before dawn the next day hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up and shot, at a number of locations around Madrid. Civilian Spanish opposition persisted as a feature of the ensuing five-year Peninsular War, the first to be called guerrilla war. Irregular Spanish forces considerably aided the Spanish, Portuguese, and British armies jointly led by Arthur Wellesley, who first landed in Portugal in August 1808. By the time of the painting's conception, the public imagination had made the rioters symbols of heroism and patriotism.Murray, Christopher John. "The Third of May 1808–1814", in Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760–1850. Taylor and Francis, 2004. pp. 1133–1134.
Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was placed in a difficult position by the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the French Revolution, and hoped for a similar development in Spain. Several of his friends, like the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés and Leandro Fernández de Moratín, were overt , the term for the supporters—collaborators in the view of many—of Joseph Bonaparte.Bareau, p. 45. Goya's 1798 portrait of the French ambassador-turned-commandant Ferdinand Guillemardet betrays a personal admiration.Licht, p. 111. Although he maintained his position as court painter, for which an oath of loyalty to Joseph was necessary, Goya had by nature an instinctive dislike of authority.Clark, p. 129. He witnessed the subjugation of his countrymen by the French troops.That Goya had first-hand knowledge of events depicted in The Disasters of War is underscored by the title of one of his prints, I saw it. During these years he painted little, although the experiences of the occupation provided inspiration for drawings that would form the basis for his prints The Disasters of War ().
In February 1814, after the final expulsion of the French, Goya approached the provisional government with a request to "perpetuate by means of his brush the most notable and heroic actions of our glorious insurrection against the Tyrant of Europe".Clark, p. 126. His proposal accepted, Goya began work on The Third of May. It is not known whether he had personally witnessed either the rebellion or the reprisals, despite many later attempts to place him at the events of either day.Connell, pp. 153–157. At the time, Goya may have been living in a house at the corner of the Puerta del Sol; however this is disputed and perhaps originated from a suspect account from the novelist Antonio de Trueba who supposedly heard it from Isidoro, Goya's gardener. Isidoro, it is claimed, said he accompanied the artist on the night of the third as he sketched the corpses of the slain.
The painting Description The Third of May 1808 is set in the early hours of the morning following the uprisingHagen, Rose-Marie and Hagen, Rainer. What Great Paintings Say. Taschen, 2003. p. 363. and centers on two masses of men: one a rigidly poised firing squad, the other a disorganized group of captives held at gunpoint. Executioners and victims face each other abruptly across a narrow space; according to Kenneth Clark, "by a stroke of genius [Goya] has contrasted the fierce repetition of the soldiers' attitudes and the steely line of their rifles, with the crumbling irregularity of their target."Clark, p. 127. A square lantern situated on the ground between the two groups throws a dramatic light on the scene. The brightest illumination falls on the huddled victims to the left, whose numbers include a monk or friar in prayer. To the immediate right and at the center of the canvas, other condemned figures stand next in line to be shot.
On the right side stands the firing squad, engulfed in shadow and painted as a monolithic unit. Seen nearly from behind, their bayonets and their shako headgear form a relentless and immutable column. Most of the faces of the figures cannot be seen, but the face of the man to the right of the main victim, peeping fearfully towards the soldiers, acts as a at the back of the central group. Without distracting from the intensity of the foreground drama, a townscape with a steeple looms in the nocturnal distance,Licht, p. 117. probably including the barracks used by the French. In the background between the hillside and the shakos is a crowd with torches: perhaps onlookers, perhaps more soldiers or victims.
The Second and Third of May are thought to have been intended as parts of a larger series.Tomlinson, p. 139. Written commentary and circumstantial evidence suggest that Goya painted four large canvases memorializing the rebellion of May 1808. In his memoirs of the Royal Academy in 1867, José Caveda wrote of four paintings by Goya of the second of May, and Cristóbal Ferriz—an artist and a collector of Goya—mentioned two other paintings on the theme: a revolt at the royal palace and a defense of artillery barracks. Contemporary prints stand as precedents for such a series. The disappearance of two paintings may indicate official displeasure with the depiction of popular insurrection.
The Disasters of War
Goya's series of aquatint etchings The Disasters of War () was not completed until 1820, although most of the prints were made in the period 1810–1814. The album of proofs given by Goya to a friend, however, now in the British Museum, provides many indications of the order in which both the preliminary drawings and the prints themselves were composed. The groups identified as the earliest clearly seem to predate the commission for the two paintings, and include two prints with obviously related compositions (illustrated), as well as I saw this, which is presumably a scene witnessed during Goya's trip to Saragossa.Bareau, pp. 49–50. (One cannot look at this) is clearly related compositionally and thematically;Spivey, pp. 193–195. the female central figure has her arms outstretched, but pointing down, while another figure has his hands clasped in prayer, and several others shield or hide their faces. This time the soldiers are not visible even from behind; only the bayonets of their guns are seen.
(And it cannot be helped) is another of the early prints, from a slightly later group apparently produced at the height of the war when materials were unobtainable, so that Goya had to destroy the plate of an earlier landscape print to make this and another piece in the Disasters series. It shows a shako-wearing firing squad in the background, this time seen receding in a frontal rather than a rear view.
Iconography and invention