Large canvas stand1/27/2024 ![]() ![]() All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot." 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. 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. Reduced to despair, they would be prepared to unleash the most terrible and courageous rebellion, and the most vicious excesses." 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. ![]() 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. ![]() ![]() A French agent in Madrid wrote that "Spain is different. Godoy was Prime Minister of Spain during the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Spain.Īlthough the Spanish people had accepted foreign monarchs in the past, they deeply resented the new French ruler. Goya's Manuel Godoy, Duke of Alcudia, Prince of the Peace, 1801. 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. 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. 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. Under the guise of reinforcing the Spanish armies, 23,000 French troops entered Spain unopposed in November 1807. It depicts the uprising that precipitated the executions of the third of May. The Second of May 1808 was completed in 1814, two months before its companion work The Third of May 1808. Ferdinand intended not only that Godoy be killed during the impending power struggle, but also that the lives of his own parents be sacrificed. He failed, however, to grasp Napoleon's true intentions, and was unaware that his new ally and co-sovereign, the former king's son Ferdinand VII of Spain, was using the invasion merely as a ploy to seize the Spanish parliament and throne. Godoy was seduced, and accepted the French offer. 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. Even in his own court he was seen as a "half-wit king who renounces cares of state for the satisfaction of hunting", and a cuckold unable to control his energetic wife, Maria Luisa of Parma. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV, was internationally regarded as ineffectual. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, the country was politically and strategically important to French interests. Napoleon I of France declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on November 10, 1799, and crowned himself Emperor in 1804. 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. 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". 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. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May 1808 marks a clear break from convention. The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a ground-breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of 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. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 1808 in the Peninsular War. The Third of May 1808 (also known as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. ![]()
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