Times of War
1808-1818
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1808 Uprising of the Spanish people against the despotic regime of Godoy. Start
of the excavations at Pompeii in Italy.
1808 Goya travels to Saragossa to sketch ruins.
1808-1809 Napoleonic troops occupy Madrid and take Saragossa.
1810 Begins to record the horrors of war in his etchings.
1811 Joseph Bonaparte awards him the Royal Order of Spain.
1812 Goya's wife Josefa dies. Portrait of the Duke of Wellington.
1813 Leocadia Weiss becomes Goya's companion.
1814 The Third of May, 1808.Goya has to justify his behavior under the
French occupation. Portrait of Ferdinand VII.
1814 Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba. Congress of Vienna. Ferdinand VII
becomes King of Spain.
1815 Start of a new series of etchings of bullfighting (La Tauromaquia).
1817 Joumey to Andalusia.
1818 The German romantic painter C.D. Friedrich paints
Voyager Above a Sea
of Clouds.
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Francisco de Goya
A Prison Scene
1810-14
Oil on zinc, 42,9 x 31,7 cm
Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle
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In 1808, war interrupted the even tenor of Goya's successful
career. Napoleon's troops, on their seemingly unstoppable advance in
Europe, suddenly appeared in Madrid, too. The Spanish king was
deposed. For five years the Spanish people's struggle for freedom
raged against the French occupier, a struggle that was fought with
great harshness on both sides. The fighting stopped only after the
intervention of English troops under the Duke of Wellington. Yet the
new king, Ferdinand VII, did not bring the longed-for freedom, but
ruled despotically. During this troubled period Goya became a
passionate Spanish patriot - but he was also a supporter of the
French Enlightenment. Despite these contradictions, in his
professional life he tried to reach an understanding with the
changing regimes. Secretly, he was working on prints that
represented the brutality of war more savagely than any paintings or
drawings had ever done before. His paintings of the Spanish uprising
express an angry protest against war and brutality that transcends
the war in Spain.
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Francisco de Goya
The Second of May, 1808: The Charge of the Mamelukes
1814
Oil on canvas, 266 x 345 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Between Two Camps
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Francisco de Goya
Portrait of General Jose Palafox
1814
Oil on canvas 248 x 224 cm
Madrid, Prado
General Palafox led the resistance in Goya's home town of Saragossa.
In October 1808 he challenged the artist to paint a picture of the
struggle against the French and portray the ruins of the ravaged
city.
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Francisco de Goya
Because she was a liberal?
1814-1824
Sepia and ink drawing, wash 20.5x14.2 cm
Madrid, Prado
The woman, chained at several points, has been imprisoned, as the inscription
indicates, because of her political opinions. Goya here refers to the legalized
atrocities under Ferdinand VII, who came to power in 1814. Opponents with liberal
ideas were threatened with imprisonment and torture, which is why many of them
went into exile.
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When Napoleon needed to send his troops to Portugal, he had been
granted support and a free passage through Spain by the statesman
Manuel Godoy; what Godoy did not realize was that he was delivering
his country into French hands. When the French troops marched into
Spain in December 1807, the fate of Charles IV's reign was sealed.
Napoleon put his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne. His
liberal reforms meant that many intellectuals "collaborated" with
the occupiers, but the majority of the Spanish people remained
unswervingly loyal to the king.
Revolt broke out throughout the country, and a brutal guerilla war
was waged. Everyone fought; even women threw themselves into the
struggle.
Goya's behavior was contradictory during this turmoil. He had no
hesitation in accepting commissions from Joseph Bonaparte;
yet as a patriot he was on the side of the Spanish people.
When the Napoleonic troops finally withdrew in 1814, Goya
commemorated the outbreak of the resistance in May 18o8 in
two large paintings. These two pictures, The Second of
May, 1808 and The Third of
May, 1808, hung on a rapidly erected triumphal arch when
the new Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, was welcomed jubilantly into
Madrid. Under the new regime, Goya had to answer for his behavior
during the period of occupation, but was soon restored to his
position as court painter. But no royal commissions came his way,
however. The political circumstances were more oppressive than
before, and liberals disappeared into the dungeons of the
Inquisition and into the city prisons.
Goya withdrew from the court and followed his own objectives. He
portrayed the nightmarish reality of the war and the disillusionment
of the post-war years in a series of prints that were later given
the title Disasters of War. They were not published in Goya's
lifetime.
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Francisco de Goya
Portrait of the Duke of Wellington
1812
Oil on canvas
64.3x52.4 cm
London, National
Gallery
The Duke of Wellington commanded
the English troops in Spain who, in
1813,
defeated Napoleon's forces.
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Francisco de Goya
Casting Bullets in the Sierra
1810-1814
Oil on wood 33x52 cm
Madrid, Palacio Zarzuela
In the mountains by Saragossa, guerilla fighters secretly produced
munitions during the war against the French,
even though the
possession of weapons was strictly prohibited.
Goya had possibly seen
such improvised munitions production in 1808, during his journey
through the war-torn countryside.
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Francisco de Goya
Un Garrochista
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The Disasters of War
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Francisco de Goya
And no help came
Disasters of War No. 15
1810-1811
Etching
14.1 x 16.8 cm
French soldiers frequently executed rebellious peasants. Goya's composition is
radical and decidedly modern, in that he renders visible the anonymity of the
killing machine by showing only the barrels of the guns to the right. In the
center of the picture stands the completely defenseless condemned man. Goya also
adopted a similar composition for his famous The Third of May, 1808.
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Hardly anyone saw these prints during Goya's lifetime. It was only
to the art historian Bermudez that he sent a complete copy with over
80 trial prints, so that his cultivated friend could correct the
inscriptions. It was not until 1863 that the first edition of the
series was puhlished under the title Desastres de la Guerra, the
Disasters of War.
Goya had given them another title, The Fatal
Consequences of the Bloody War in Spain against Bonaparte and other
Striking Caprices in 85 Impressions.
Depicting the terrible reality of war stark and unvarnished, Goya
showed how war turns men into beasts. He had seen it for himself,
when he traveled across the country to Saragossa in 1808. He bought
a large number of copper plates and began the etchings in 1810.
Since copper was a rare commodity, he cut up some of his old
engravings.
In addition to his own experiences, Goya used eyewitness accounts of
the horrors committed. It had not been possible to ignore the events
of the war, for there were no clear battle lines. Throughout the
country underground fighters banded together to attack the French
troops. Both sides, occupiers and occupied, butchered their enemies
in acts of revenge, and civilians were seldom spared.
Goya's prints are by no means traditional depictions of battle. They
show summary shootings, rape, piles of corpses, horrifically
mutilated people, hangings, people fleeing in panic, starving,
wounded. The perpetrators became the victims and the victims became
the perpetrators.
The discordant commentaries to the prints often stress the
senselessness of violence, for example Bury them and say nothing,
This is not acceptable, No one could know why, It's no good
screaming, Cartloads for the cemetery.
Finally, years after the war,
Goya added a bitter satirical series against the state and the
Church.
Only the final print in the Disasters expressed a timid hope: as
light shines from truth, who has taken the form of a lovely woman,
her enemies fade away, back into the darkness.
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Francisco de Goya
Great deeds! With corpses!
Disasters of War No. 39
1812-1814
Etching 15.7x20.7 cm
Hideously mauled, the corpses of three men have been left on the
barren plain. Were these Frenchmen or Spaniards? Goya leaves the
question open. He reaches back to the traditional image of the
martyrdom of Christian saints, but here there is no hope of
redemption in the afterlife. The suffering of these men is meaningless.
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Francisco de Goya
And they were as wild beasts
Disasters of War No. 5
1812-1814
Etching and aquatint 15.6x20.8 cm
The war swept away the distinction between civilians and
soldiers, and between the roles of men and women. With the courage of
their despair, their children in their arms. the women throw themselves
upon their opponents. Contemporary sources do report wild attacks by
women during battles and skirmishes. Goya dedicated several of the
Disasters of War prints to them.
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The Third of May, 1808
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Francisco de Goya
The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of
Madrid
1814
Oil on canvas, 266 x 345 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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After the end of the war, Goya approached the government with the
"burning desire to immortalize the most remarkable and most heroic
deeds or scenes of our fabled uprising against the European tyrants."
This was not least intended to demonstrate his loyalty to Spain. Goya
started on two large-format paintings and selected as his subjects
two key events from the beginning of the Spanish uprising against
the French: the revolt of the people of Madrid on May 2,1808;and the execution of the rebels the following morning. The first
painting depicts the bloody battle between the rebels and the
Mamelukes at the Puerta del Sol as a chaotic mele'e in the tradition
of Baroque battlefield paintings. The second painting, depicting the
executions, has a much more modern feel for today's observer. Under
the black night sky, French soldiers are carrying out the order to
shoot at citizens taken from the streets of Madrid. In this act of
revenge, any Spaniard caught carrying weapons was to be shot. In
some of his etchings from the Disasters of War series, Goya had
already worked on similar compositions. In print No. 2 of the
series, the two sides in the war stand opposed: the Spaniards fling
themselves despairingly with improvised weapons against the
well-equipped French. While we see the soldiers from
the rear, Goya gives dignity and individuality to the rebels by
depicting their faces. This principle of composition is further
developed in the painting. Here, the faceless row of
soldiers is pushed into a diagonal and the rifle barrels reach
forward in parallel lines.
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Francisco de Goya
Right or wrong
Disasters of War No. 2
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The business of killing is carried out with cold precision. The
dramatic lighting heightens the impact of the scene. The light from a
large stable lamp falls coldly onto the victim who stands out from
the others. The dead man is lying on the ground, arms outstretched,
vividly indicating the fate that awaits the rebels behind him. The
next victims of the execution are standing in the center of the
painting. With arms stretched upwards, the central figure is
reminiscent of the crucified Christ, and in fact it is possible to
see wounds on the palms of his hands. With this reference, Goya
transcends the contemporary framework and shows unequivocably that
the horrific murder of defenseless people is a recurring reality. At
the same time as this, great dignity is conferred onto the condemned
man. The men are depicted in their hopeless situation with special
psychological insight. The dramatic posture and gestures of the
victims emerging from the darkness confront the observer directly.
Nevertheless, Goya's layout places the observer on the same side as
the murderers: we are almost looking over their shoulders.
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Francisco de Goya
The Third of May, 1808 (detail)
1814
Oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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Execution: Violence as Motif in Modern Art
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Goya's modernity
Goya had no followers in his lifetime; in Spain, his painting
remained a unique phenomenon. Even in the contemporary art of
Europe, in the Classical and Romantic movements, there is hardly
anything comparable. The effect Goya had on later generations was
therefore all the stronger. His painting constantly inspired artists
to use his compositions, adapt them, and take them further. The most
famous example of this is his painting The Third of May, 1808. Goya
himself used well-known formulae from Christian painting for his
work, from religious representations of violence such as the
crucifixion of Christ and the killing of St. Sebastian with arrows.
Yet something fundamentally new for art was happening in Goya's
painting. His free painting technique, his critical, independent
viewpoint. and the psychological depth with which he portrayed human
states of mind all make him an important precursor of the moderns.
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Edouard Manet
The French painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) saw Goya's painting
The Third of May, 1808 in 1865, in the Prado in Madrid. Two years later
he was dealing with the theme of execution intensively in his own
painting. The reason for this was a sensational event: during the
struggle to free Mexico from French domination, the Emperor of
Mexico, Maximilian, who had been crowned by Napoleon III in
1867,wasshotby republican forces. Manet created several versions of
this theme, which he developed from an outline technique employing
strong colors to a static composition in lighter tones. From Goya he
adopted the confrontation between the executioners and their
victims. But in doing this he heightened the situation by making the
already short distance between them even shorter and by representing
the precise moment of shooting, the flash and smoke of the discharge
being clearly visible. For the soldiers, execution is apparently an
everyday event they are standing relaxed in a semi-circle, doing
their duty; the officer is already re-loading his weapon. Only the
onlookers, who are crowding up behind the wall, are aware that this
is an extraordinary situation. Unlike Goya's dramatic
painting, Manet's has the effect of a factual record of a historical
event. The neutral gray tones and the bright daylight stress the
sober atmosphere.
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Edouard Manet
The Execution of Emperor Maximilian
1867
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Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), who knew both Goya's and Manet's
execution paintings, gave a fresh twist to this theme. His picture
was painted after World War II, when he was heavily committed to the
international peace movement. Originally, Picasso planned the
painting as a general symbol of man's inhumanity to man, and only
while he was working on it did he give it a concrete reference to
the massacre during the Korean War. Only the title gives any
reference to an actual event;
the pictorial content itself is very general. Not only are the
victims, women and children, completely naked, but so are the
soldiers. However, the apparently natural nakedness is deceptive: the
men appear robot-like, a dehumanized death machine. Brandishing
strange weapons, they are completely gray, which alienates them even
more. In its direct appeal for sympathy and indignation, the picture
is almost overstated.
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Pablo Picasso
Massacre in Korea
1951
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Wolf Vostell
Miss America
1968
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Wolf Vostell
The German artist Wolf Vostell, who often adopted a position of
social criticism in his work, took up the theme of the execution in
1968, during the Vietnam War, in his painting Miss America. His
source was the famous documentary photograph of an execution in
Vietnam taken by Edward T. Adams, which at the time was distributed
worldwide by the media. Provocatively, Vostell contrasted the
close-up shot of the execution with the picture of an American
beauty queen, thus creating a juxtaposition of brutality and
banality often found in modern media.
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