Goya : The disasters of War and it´s society: Paintings

GOYA'S PAINTINGS :

I'm going to explain four of the most important paintings of Goya: The third of May(El tres de mayo) 1808-1814, The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda) 1797, The second of May (El dos de Mayo) 1814 and The Colossus (El Coloso) 1808.

The second of May (1814): The second of May, also Known as The Charge of the Mamelukes was an important Goya's paiting finished in 1814 as the same time of The third of May. Goya wanted to represent this event before the war, so he applied for economic helps to the Regence Council (Consejo de Regencia), which was ruled by the cardinal Luis de Borbón to paint the great deads of the Spanish people. Since Frebuary to May 1814 he was busy making these works.

In this painting Goya wanted to represent the event of the popular anger:the attack of the people from Madrid (without weapons) against the French army. In the center of the composition, a mameluke (Egyptian soldier under the command of the French) dies falling off the horse while a Spanish is stabbing him and another wounds mortally the horse, symbolising the destruction of the war.

In the background, the Spanish show anger and desperation, attack with their blade weapons and horses while the French army tries to scape from there. The meaning of the value of the faces and horces, whose wish is to go away, it is showed in their faces and the scared in their eyes.

In conclusion, Goya capture the event that could be the incindent that demostrate his position against the war and the irracionality of the human being, how it belongs to the Elightened spirit.

The third of May (1808-1814) : is a painting completed in 1814, as The second of May, it is located in the Prado Museum. It represents the fighting of the Spanish people against the French during the Napoleon's Empire in 1808. The painting was finished in 1814, six years later than the events that it descibes. Maybe the purpose of the painting was a proposal of the new goverment made to Goya that consisted of made paintings of the events happened during the rise of the Spanish against the Napoleon's goverment.

It is divided into two essential parts: the first, in the left, is composed by a group of citizens that are in different positions; some of them are praying because they are going to be shotted by the French army. The second part is formed by a group of French soldiers, they are pointing with their guns the group of civilians. In the left side we can find the Principe Pio Hill (Montaña del Principe Pio) and in the opposite side the architecture that belongs to the city of Madrid and the dark night where the actions took place and which covers the rest of the composition.The man of the white shirt is the mainly figure of the painting, illuminated by the only light of the painting. His expression shows horror before an inevitable death.

The Third of May 1808 has inspired a number of other major paintings, including a series by Édouard Manet, and Pablo Picasso's Guernica.

The Nude Maja (1797): this is one of the most famous paintings. It was painted before 1800, and later it was completed with anothe work: the Clothed Maja(1802). In both paintings is represented the body of the same woman. It isn't a classical work, the woman who is presented is real, contemporary of

Goya, and even in that time, she was called "the gypsy".

The identity of the woman is unknown, however it is speculated that she is the Duchesse of Alba because after her death Godoy(Spanish minister) inherit all her personal chattles incluiding these two paintings. But it isn't known if the face belongs to the duchesse.

Even it's said that it was the duchesses face seen from below. The Duke of Alba exhumed the body in 1845 trying to diminish the truth of this leyend because the body was very similar with the Maja. The Inquisition ruled Goya to the court because of this painting, but he was succesfully absolved due to the Cardinal Luis the Borbón and Ferdinard VII.

The Colossus(1808): also called The Giant or The Storm. When Goya did this painting he had lost the faith in the Napoleon's Empire and in France becuse of the destruction he saw during the war. Now Goya is against the Enlightened thinkers and instead of the portraits to the real family or the important people of this period he starts to paint more dark and violence paintings with elements that belong to the Romanticism.

This colossus is moving between the clouds of mist, full of reflexes, which provokes the gone of the fall army. The colosus is the symbol of the war or maybe the Giant of the Reason who is being acosed by the smoke of the canons. But it could symbolised the own Spain, which is moving back and turn the back on the future and the progress.

Goya became ill during the war. This, joined to the pain of being persecuting by the politicians was the cause of this new period in his paintings which are called: The Black Paintings.

Otras obras importantes que marcaron la pintura de Goya y que representaron su descontento conel contexto social y político de la época fueron:

Saturno devorando a su hijo (1819-1823)