Francisco Goya’s Timeless Anti-War Manifesto
The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine is stunningly reminiscent of another invasion that Europe witnessed a little more than two centuries ago. In October 1807, Napoleon Bonaparte, the megalomaniac emperor of France, ordered his military to cross over the Pyrenees under the pretext of sending reinforcements to the French army that had already occupied Portugal. The Spanish monarchy gave its tacit support to Napoleon because it hoped to secure Southern Portugal for itself.
But to the Spaniards’ shock and dismay, soon after crossing the Pyrenees the French forces captured Pamplona and Barcelona in rapid succession, and on March 19 forced King Charles IV of Spain to abdicate the throne. Thus began the Peninsular War (1808 — 1814) which pitted Napoleon’s France against much of Europe.
Uprising against French occupation
The French occupation of Spain spurred a spontaneous uprising. On May 2, a group of Spanish loyalists launched an assault on the French army. Scores of French soldiers, mostly Memluks (Turkish members of the French Imperial Guard) were killed. The French retaliated and during early morning hours of May 3 hundreds of Spaniards were rounded up and executed by firing squads at various locations in and around Madrid. The execution followed a proclamation by French Marshal Murat issued to his troops that read: “The population of Madrid, led astray, has given itself to revolt and murder. French blood has flowed. It demands vengeance. All those arrested in the uprising, arms in hand, will be shot.”
Six years later in 1814, with Napoleon’s empire lying in tatters, Francisco de Goya (1746–1828), the famed Spanish artist, completed two paintings “to perpetuate, with a paintbrush, the most notable and heroic actions or scenes of our glorious uprising against the tyrant of Europe.” In two large canvases Goya immortalized/commemorated the events of the rebellion and the execution that followed.
The Second & Third of May, 1808 Paintings
One of the two canvases, The Second of May 1808 depicts the scene of battle between the Memluk Cavalry of the French Imperial Guard and the rioting citizens. Mounted on horses, the Memluks seemed to have a strategic advantage over the rioters, but they were simply overwhelmed by the sheer number of people converging on them. Goya remains true to his art in the painting; although he seems to portray the rebels as heroes fighting a far superior enemy with the most rudimentary of weapons, he describes the scene with objectivity. While the rebels seem to be determined in their fight, the soldiers are in a desperate survival mode. Goya has captured the delicate tension of life hanging in the balance with remarkable authenticity and realism making us feel that we’re witnessing the event right in front of us. The picture of several French soldiers lying dead in a pool of blood helps to heighten the impact of the work in terms of eliciting our sympathy for the unfortunate victims. From the look of Memluk soldiers one can read an element of surprise, implying that the attack was unexpected and sudden. This work could very well be the first artistic rendition of guerrilla warfare in painting.
Goya’s second canvas The Third of May 1808 portrays the execution of captured rebels following the previous day’s incidence. At the center of the painting is a condemned man who appears to be kneeling on the ground with hands stretched outwards in a sign of complete surrender. With his disarming pose the man seems to be indicating that he’s ready to sacrifice his life but might also be pleading that the lives of his compatriots be spared. The man seems to belong to the working class yet he projects a nobility and heroism reminiscent of Christ’s martyrdom. A close look at victim’s right hand shows stigmata, corresponding to the bodily mark on the crucified Christ.
The condemned figure is surrounded by terrified captives including a monk who might be reading verses from the Bible as his final act. Several bodies already executed lie on the floor soaked in blood. Several men are too terrified even to look at what is about to happen and cover their eyes in anticipation of the certainty of the moment.
The hazy view of the long line of captured patriots extending into the horizon and awaiting the firing squad both heightens and magnifies the scale of brutality.
The event takes place in Príncipe Pío, a well-known hill in the western part of Madrid. The landmark helps to lend credence and authenticity to the scene, making it all the more painful and harrowing.
The French soldiers standing directly across the captives with their guns drawn are presented as soul-less and heartless mechanical beings. They seem to be acting in unison and with robotic precision, Goya doesn’t show us their faces as if they don’t have any identity or individuality given that they are simply carrying out orders from the top.
The Third of May 1808 is universally acknowledged as one of the great paintings of all time. Art historian Kenneth Clark has called it “the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word…” The Third of May 1808 also inspired a number of other groundbreaking paintings, including the The Execution of Emperor Maximilian (1868–69) series by Edouard Manet as well as Guernica (1937) and The Massacre in Korea (1951) by Pablo Picasso.
The Disasters of War
Well before Goya commenced working on the two of his masterpieces in 1814, he had begun producing etchings based on the traumatic course of events following the French invasion. In all, Goya composed 82 etchings that make up the series called The Disasters of War, a collective manifesto serving as a macabre, haunting and poignant testament to the inhumane consequences of war. In the harrowing Disasters of War series, begun in the 1808, finished in 1820 but not published until decades later, Goya expanded the theme of violence and terror that he created in the two paintings discussed above. In the Disasters series he not only focused on the sheer dimensions of death, destruction and suffering due to war and foreign occupation, but he also zeroed in on how war brings out the worst in human beings as well as in our institutions.
The 82 etchings are often categorized into three groups — warfare and violence, famine, and political allegory.
War and Violence
The Peninsular War was the bloodiest event in Spain’s modern history. Over one million died in the war in a nation of 11 million people. During this period, Goya travelled throughout Spain and saw first-hand the ravages of war and the suffering of the population. The first four dozen of the total 82 etchings show riveting imageries of the scale of violence and unimaginable cruelty that the war unleashed.
In the sketch above (Plate 15), a prisoner, recently killed, lies at the feet of a bound, and blindfolded man just about to be executed. His executioners are represented only by the barrels of their rifles aiming menacingly from the right-hand edge of the frame. The same scenario is being played out in the background. Many of these prisoners were most likely simply innocent citizens as was the priest in Goya’s work For a clasp knife (plate 34) where he displays the image of a garroted priest whose only crime was that he had a knife in his possession.
In the sketch below (Plate 12), upon coming across several corpses strewn on the ground, a man collapses, and throws up with his arms outstretched. The sight of smoke billowing from torched villages against a barren landscape makes the scene all the more gripping. By naming the sketch “This is what you were born for,” Goya is wondering if human life has any meaning at all.
But Goya is unequivocal in showing how war can dehumanize both warring parties. When rage overtakes reason and retribution overcomes compassion there are no limits to where cruelty could go, Goya tells us. In the following print This is Worse (Plate 37), Goya captures how even human remains of deceased individuals were not off limits to desecration and perverted cruelty as the mutilated corpse mounted on the tree shows. The presence of two French soldiers nearby indicates that this type of displays were meant as a warning that the same fate would await anyone thinking of challenging the occupying forces.
Almost a mirror image of the above form of brutality and cruelty is played out in the print below, The same thing (Plate 3), where a Spanish insurgent raises an enormous axe to attack a French soldier. The terrorized soldier appears to plead for mercy. Another insurgent is busy stabbing a second soldier riding on his back. For Goya, violence begets violence and makes both sides in a conflict blind to their humane faculties.
Famine
The second part of The Disasters of War series consists of prints on the famine that devastated Madrid in 1811 and 1812 and caused the death of an estimated 15 percent of the city’s population. Goya was not only a direct witness to this tragedy but was also believed to have been a victim of it himself, including loss of loved ones. In the image below (Plate 48) a man is begging, standing next to his huddled wife with their baby lying on her lap. In front of them lie victims of the famine, dead or barely alive.
In Plate 60 below, Goya draws a couple where the man is seen standing and wrapped in a dark blanket. We only have a partial view of face of the man but the fact that his right hand is covering much of his face heightens the intensity of the man’s despair and hopelessness. The shadow of the woman behind him helps to magnify the feeling of doom. At their feet lie several figures — including children — all robbed of strength and most possibly on the verge of death.
In the sketch below (Plate 50), three men are carrying an unconscious or deceased woman with a small child crying behind them. In this work Goya powerfully captures the pain and suffering of children, the most vulnerable members of any society. Some art critics have praised this work as the most powerful and poignant of the entire famine series.
But Goya also castigated the indifference and disdain of the privileged members of society towards the plight of the ordinary citizens at a time of an unprecedented crisis. Below in Plate 55, a famine-stricken family is juxtaposed with a fashionable couple seemingly indifferent to their misery. Actually in naming the title for the plate, The worst is to beg, Goya is very likely ridiculing the disdain of the well-off couple for the beggars.
Political Allegory
The last part of The Disasters of War, known as the caprichos enfáticos (emphatic caprices), serve as a critique of political repression and the judicial practice of torture that followed the reinstatement of Ferdinand VII as Spain’s king in 1814. These ‘caprichos’ specifically target the Church because of its alliance and kinship with the monarchy and its continuation of political repression.
The Consequences (Plate 72) depicts vampire like creatures — animal-human hybrids — feasting on a dead corpse. Goya depicts the main blood-sucking and flesh-eating vampire with a human face bearing resemblance of the features of Pope Pius VII, who is also portrayed in May the cord break on the next plate (Plate 77).
In plate 77, the Pope is portrayed as performing a balancing act on a fragile cord, a clear reference to his collaboration with the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand VII. The act serves as a metaphor for his betrayal of his moral and spiritual obligations to the Spanish people at a time when they needed them the most.
The Disasters of War concludes with two allegorical images of truth. Plate 79 depicts the burial of a young woman who represents a personification of Truth. The burial is led by hooded monks. In the subsequent print (Plate 80) titled, ‘Will she rise again?’ to everyone’s surprise, she comes to life in a full burst of life. The imagery of Plate 80 is Goya’s potential hopefulness for a progressive future for Spain, although he seems to have his doubts too as expressed in the title of the plate with a question mark.
Any hope for Spain that Goya may have harbored in his portrayal of the Truth lady would soon be dashed to the ground with Ferdinand VII’s abolition of the constitution, and re-instatement of the Inquisition in collaboration with the Church. Persecution and torture of liberals became commonplace. Many of Goya’s friends and acquaintances were forced into exile. In September 1824 Goya himself left Spain and moved to Bordeaux, France. He spent the last four years of his life there.
Goya’s Disasters of War series was not printed until thirty-five years after the artist’s death. It is widely believed that Goya may not have found the prevailing situation of Spain to be conducive for his outspoken and politically charged views to be published during his life-time.
The Disasters of War remains one of the boldest anti-war statements ever made in art. The series had a profound influence on a wide range of thinkers, artists and writers such as Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Like Goya’s Disasters, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is a scathing criticism of the violence and inhumanity that followed the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Present-day photojournalists also draw inspiration from Goya’s insights into the ravages of war, and its profound impact on our humanity. In a BBC interview, the famous photojournalist Don McCullin spoke for many others who have worked on the war front: “When I took pictures in war, I couldn’t help thinking of Goya.”
As we continue to witness images of carnage and devastation in Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion, we are simply struck by the force and relevance of Goya’s body of anti-war works. They depict an apocalyptic world ravaged by unimaginable violence, cruelty, despair and hopelessness where ordinary citizens are left without any direction and protection. While Goya’s works provide us with a jarring window to man’s inhumanity to man, we should not lose sight of the underlying message pervading his works: if we witness cruelty and injustice around us and do nothing or fail to take a stand, we become complicit in the act with the perpetrator.
