The Third of May 1808/ Francisco Goya.

Artist	Francisco Goya
Year	1814

Francisco Goya, like William Blake, preserved a sense of humanity that could survive disillusion. With their prophetic and ironic insight, they were the first to face a world of passion and absurdity before which conventional heroic art was powerless.
In the work 'The Third of May 1808', Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808. 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 suggestion.


'The Third of May 1808' can be said to be the first great picture in every sense of the word - in style, in subject and in intention; and it should be a model for the socialist and revolutionary painting of the present day! In the face of Murat's firing squad, the victims cover their eyes, or clasp their hands in prayer. And in the middle a man with a dark face throws up his arms, so that his death is a sort of crucifixion. His white shirt, laid open to the rifles, is the flash of inspiration which has ignited the whole design.


The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a groundbreaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. 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. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, The Third of May 1808 is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention".
The Third of May 1808 has inspired a number of other major paintings, including a series by Édouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso's Massacre in Korea as well as his masterpiece Guernica.