Francisco Goya The Third Of May Essay

The painting The Third of May, by Francisco de Goya, was done to commemorate the events of that took place during the Napoleonic Wars in Madrid, Spain on May 2 and 3 1808. The painting sets the scene of a man about to be killed by a firing squad. The bodies of those who have already been killed are scattered around him, and those that wait to be killed stand in line behind him. The

Francisco Goya’s The Executions of May 3, 1808, is a remarkably interesting piece of art. This piece represents a protest against the Napoleon Occupational Army in Madrid. There are various visual elements and design principles in the art, which will be covered. The beginning of this ILO will contain the visual elements first, followed by the design principles, and what they mean in the artwork.

Goya made a series of etchings and paintings depicting the atrocities of both sides involved with the war. The most famous of these paintings are the two depicting the scenes from the second and third of May. The work focuses on the victims of the situation, which in this case are the Spanish citizens being executed. The work is not meant to be beautiful, but is instead supposed to be horrible in order to shock the viewer. Goya's purpose within the painting is less to blame the French, but instead to point out to people the "faceless and mechanical forces of war itself, blindly killing a representative of humanity"(Stokstad). He used the incident as an example of how horrible war is and what can happen when violence is instituted.

Guernica is monochromatic to make its imagery more powerful. Lack of color keeps the viewer focused on the subject matter at hand, as well as keeping the mural cold, which agrees with its general theme of injustice in war. Also, Picasso’s flat imagery does not distract the viewer from concentrating on imagery. The viewer is given no other choice than to concentrate on the subject matter of Guernica and ponder it’s meaning. The flat, grayscale images generalize the imagery and contribute to the general theme of unnecessary suffering and tragedy.

Preceding Goya in the line of Spanish painters was “…Velázquez, painter of Spain’s worldly pride and power, of the pomp and panoply of that brief moment in the 17th Century when the nation stood boldly, if insecurely, at the center of the historical stage,” (Schickel 7). Velázquez’s great works such as Las Meninas and The Surrender of Breda show a grandeur and sophistication of the Spanish nobility as well as “preparations…not only to end the war, but also to initiate the peace that follows,” (Velazquez). Unfortunately, even a century before Goya would truly begin the height of his artistic journey, “shadows lie across most of [Velazquez’s] canvases, as if Velázquez sensed what his sitters did not – that the tide had turned against Spain,” (Schickel 7). By the time Goya began creating works the public of today recognize, any veil of peace his predecessor clung to was stripped away, leaving Goya to depict the truth of Spain’s precarious political situation and the reality of the human

Here is a very interesting part I found from the painting. Most of the light is gathered on the soldier who leans backward and stares at the spectators, comparing with the dark light

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes was conceived on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, a town in northern Spain. The child of a guilder, Goya spent the vast majority of his childhood in Saragossa. There he started considering painting around the age of fourteen. He was an understudy of José Luzán Martínez. At to begin with, Goya learned by impersonation. He duplicated the works of incredible experts, discovering motivation in progress of such craftsmen as Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez and Rembrandt van Rijn.

The painting shows the most joyous celebration of the Soviet Union soldiers after conquering the capitol. Some spectators have said “[they’ve] never seen a painting depict the joy of victory as much as this one.” You can see that in this painting it seems like a very hard fought battle and that it must have been grueling and ferocious. You can tell that at the end of this long terrible battle the victors that stand all around their fallen foes are celebrating and emotional and overall purely joyed. This painting depicts the image that you could create in your head of the battle’s end perfectly. The smoke filling the sky and the bullet riddled pillars shows the grueling battle. The soldiers of the Red Army standing in arms with their comrades cheering and smiling just shows victory to the absolute best extent.

Great insights went into the intricate composition of Francisco Goya’s painting The Third of May 1808, his painting utilizes the principles of art and design which displays all six principles: unity and variety; emphasis; balance; rhythm and movement; perspective; and proportion and scale. All six principles could also be identified and critically analyzed within his painting The Third of May 1808 which ultimately resulted in a whole cohesive composition.

“Saturn Devouring His Children” is the boldest painting of the group. Goya portrays a grim voracious giant with predatory, lunatic eyes stuffing his son’s torn, headless body into his maw, a visual equivalent of torture and murder, set against the darkness which accentuates the mood of despair to illustrate his honest views of humanity during a turbulent time.

Francisco Goya’s, The Third of May, 1808 was painted right about 1814-15. It is an oil on canvas painting and is the size of 8’ 9" x 13' 4". It is displayed at Museo del Prado, Madrid. According to smarthistory.org, “The Third of May is acclaimed as one of the great paintings of all time, and has even been called the world’s first modern painting” (khanacademy.org). The interpretation of Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 is a vivid representation of the atrocities of war during the Napoleonic war in Spain, which is captured and illustrated brilliantly. The depiction of French soldiers in a row lining prisoners up to be executed is a snapshot of an event in time, which is frozen in this timeless piece of art painted by Goya.

The drawing “The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid or ‘The Executions’”, painted by Goya Y Lucientes, Francisco DE, shows all the bad and the ugly sides of a war. As you look closely into the painting you can see the soldiers holding guns against the civilians, and dead bodies on the floor, which made me think it’s a war or an execution. The drawing shows execution, and the fact that people really don’t want to see it, because in the picture it shows civilians closing their eyes, and looking away like they were scared of the people holding the guns.

Early in his childhood, Goya knew that he wanted to become like Antonio Gonzalez Velazquez the famous fresco painter. Lead by his passion, Goya pursued his talent and vocation as a painter. His interest in contemporary painting appeared at an early stage in his life, when he got inspired by the work of the Italian painter Giambattista Tiepolo. That influence obviously showed in the painting of La Novillada where Goya portrayed himself as a bullfighter using same compositional and stylistic techniques as Tiepolo. His representation of himself as a bullfighter was not unintentional. In his depiction of himself in what seems a common attitude to aspiring artists, Goya was not by anyway quiet nor modest about his talent, on the contrary, he celebrated his flamboyant

The Dying Gaul is a sculpture that represents a Gaul man, and was made in Greece between 220-230 BCE. The size of the sculpture is a little bit over life-sized. The artwork is naturalistic in a plethora of ways. He is naturalistic because of his facial expressions, body posture, and characteristics.

In The Disasters of War (1810–1820), he showed how brutal the French were in the invasion of Spain. In the early plates of the series, Goya depicted “the dead and injured are carried away, soldiers strip corpses, which are then thrown into a common grave” in the Plate 18 — Bury them and keep quiet (Tomlinson 1994, p.191). This picture wholly described how the war looked in Spain during that time: how people were killed and then buried like it was a normal scenario. The ruthlessness of the French also sent out another message that “beauty is not only destroyed, but grotesquely ravaged to attest the end of any faith in an ideal” (p.193). In the paintings, people lost their dignity, and there are no heroes countless unidentified victims in the picture, which indicate that humanity is only ideal in the Revolution (p.202). The hand gestures in the paintings are in motion, which emphasized the instantaneity of the climax. For example, in the painting, the soldiers’ are holding arms and already stabbing it into the victims. The capture of the particular moment reinforce the brutality of people in that