García 1

Emir García

Survey of 19th C Art AHIS-2010 2023W

Matthew Allen

February 7th

Formal Analysis: "The Third of May 1808"

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de. The Third of May 1808. Museo del Prado. Madrid,

Spain, 1814.
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SNAPSHOT

This painting depicts a night execution by firing squad where a group of soldiers are

pointing rifles against a man raising his arms, a monk, and a group of unarmed male adults

leaning on each other; there are also some dead men lying on the ground and a group of

observers beside a hill. The only visible light source is a lamp on the ground between the

executioners and the victims, and the background has a building and a dark sky.

ANALYSIS

An oil on canvas painting measuring 2.68 by 3.47 meters, more prominent than a person

to make a strong impression but intimate enough because of its highly explicit subject, as it

depicts an execution of prisoners carried away by armed forces. It is composed of six types of

elements distributed along the lower two-thirds of the frame that conform to the positive space

and one-third area at the top conforming to the negative one.

One of the closest elements is situated on the bottom left, shocking the viewer with

corpses. These dead men have their arms raised and show evidence of being shot on their bodies

and foreheads. On the opposite side of them stand a line of soldiers aligned obliquely to the

viewer with their faces concealed to communicate depersonalization. They all wear full uniforms

and carry their rifles set with bayonets in a shooting range exercise formation. In front of them

lies a polygonal lamp on the floor, lit towards the composition's focal point, a standing

dark-skinned man raising his hands over his head, signifying martyrdom. Two men, also a target,

stand on his right side. One is a monk praying, suggesting they are in a dire situation. Behind

them, a group of people in various distressing poses seem to be witnessing the event, implying

that they would be the next victims. All the non-soldier figures stand between a grassless hill in
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the background and the soldiers' bayonets, indicating that they are trapped. Far behind in the

background is a large cathedral-like building under an almost pitch-black starless night sky.

The color palette in this painting has a narrow range of unsaturated hues except for the

depicted crimson blood and the primary victim's ivory shirt and mustard trousers that match two

lamp surfaces. All of the other elements are neutral, painted with a selection of sepia, chocolate,

burnt umber, rust, tan, khaki, wheat, bronze, ochre, warm gray, slate gray, bistre, beige, black,

white, charcoal, and pale silver, olive green, army green, teal, and goldenrod; which confers the

painting with a gloomy aesthetic, coherent with the event depicted.

The brushwork shows a splotched technique as a filler for most areas, with longer streaks

used to accentuate. The predominant direction of the brushstroke gesture is horizontal for the

human figures and vertical for the background elements, with bolder oblique lines to render the

man in the white shirt, adding dynamism and drawing the eyes of the viewer into the focal point

of the painting.

The dramatic poses and subject, the passion in the emotions shown by the characters, and

the defiance against authority denoted in this piece tell us that it is part of the Romanticism art

movement (Facos, 78).

Few pieces exemplify human atrocities as expressively as this one, where Goya exposes

the horrifying reality of such a situation in a visceral way. It communicates the human reactions

of the victims and witnesses participating in the event. It also alludes to how taking a life can

strip away one's humanity and inner individuality in a conflict. Furthermore, the extended arms

victim and the praying person are two elements depicted in many religious works of medieval
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art, thus alluding to the uselessness of religion in the face of death but epitomizing the martyr's

figure as an element that transcends the tragedy.

WORKS CITED

Facos, Michelle. “Romanticism.” An Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art, Routledge,

London, 2011, pp. 77–109.

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de. The Third of May 1808. Museo del Prado. Madrid,

Spain, 1814.