In The Third of May 1808, how is the Legacy discussed?
The first paraphrasing of The Third of May was Édouard Manet's Execution of Emperor Maximilian, painted in several versions between 1867 and 1869. In recording a current event to which neither he nor the emerging art of photography was witness, Manet was inspired by Goya's precedent and may have seen the work at the Prado in 1865 before beginning his own paintings, which were too sensitive to be exhibited in France in Manet's lifetime. He undoubtedly saw an 1867 print published by an acquaintance. Art critic Arthur Danto compares Goya's work and Manet's:The Third of May also depicts an execution, an early event in the so-called Peninsular War between France and Spain. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain in 1808, capturing its royal family and replacing them with his brother, Joseph. The French were as unpopular in Spain as they later were in Mexico, and they encountered a fierce insurrection, which ultimately triumphed. The Third of May execution was an indiscriminate killing of civilians by French soldiers in reprisal for a guerrilla attack the previous day. Goya's painting of the massacre, which shows terrified civilians facing a firing squad, was intended to arouse anger and hatred on the part of Spanish viewers. Goya's is a highly romantic picture of a deeply emotional episode.
The Third of May is cited as an influence on Pablo Picasso's 1937 Guernica, which shows the aftermath of the Nazi German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. An exhibition in 2006 at the Prado and the Reina Sofía showed The Third of May, Guernica, and the Execution of the Emperor Maximilian in the same room. Also in the room was Picasso's Massacre in Korea, painted in 1951 during the Korean War—an even more direct reference to the composition of The Third of May. The perpetrators in this painting were intended to be the United States Army or their United Nations allies.
Aldous Huxley wrote in 1957 that Goya lacked Rubens' ability to fill the canvas with an ordered composition; but he considered The Third of May a success because Goya "is speaking in his native language, and he is therefore able to express what he wants to say with maximum force and clarity". Kenneth Clark remarked on the painting's radical departure from history painting and its intensity: "With Goya we do not think of the studio or even of the artist at work. We think only of the event. Does this imply that The Third of May is a kind of superior journalism, the record of an incident in which depth of focus is sacrificed to an immediate effect? I am ashamed to say that I once thought so; but the longer I look at this ...the more clearly I recognise that I was mistaken."
Napoleon France bombing of Guernica Execution of Emperor Maximilian United States Army firing squad Aldous Huxley Peninsular War Pablo Picasso history painting Guernica es Édouard Manet Reina Sofía Spanish Civil War Arthur Danto Kenneth Clark Korean War Massacre in Korea