The Blood of May

If you wander through the gallaries of the Prado museum in Madrid you're likely to encounter these two paintings in the same room by one of Spain's master artist--Francisco Goya.



(The Second of May 1808)

The painting depicts the beginning of Madrid's popular uprising against Napolean's forces, which was occupying Spain in 1808. The event begins the six-year long Spanish War of Independence. Under the pretense of conquering Portugal and dividing it up with the Spain crown, Napolean craftily moves his troops into Spain with hardly any resistance. When Napolean removed Charles IV and the royal family out of Spain and into France, that was the last straw for many Madridleños. Commoners took to the streets in protest against French rule. The professional army, with Mameluke mercenaries as depicted above, charged against the angry commoners and the people fought back with clubs, kitchen knives, stones and whatever else they could find.


Goya points to no central focal point. The painting's composition is chaotic. Any sense of balance spins out of control. It is thrown out of balance at its very center--by that attack of red paint which depicts the slain mameluke sliding off his white horse. There's an anominity, a facelessness in the violence. Even if Goya might be commemerating the bravery of the commoners, he no doubt understands the grimness and utter lack of heroic glamour in the event. This is far from Delecroix Liberty Leading the People.

(The Third of May 1808)
Hauntingly iconic, this painting is on the grand masterpieces you'll see at the Prado. This is the aftermath of the events of the second of May. Anyone known to participate in the uprising was captured and, in the early morning hours of the third, executed. The man in the center kneels down, with a brilliant light from a lantern making him almost glow. The light seems tranfiguring, like a halo on the white-clothed martyr. But this reading soon becomes disrupted. The light is being used by the soildiers to efficiently kill their victims better. The middle figure spreads his arms in a Christ-like pose. It is a gesture both of appeal and defience. It seems to scream out, "Behold, my humanity!" The firing squad seems mechanical. The repetition of the soldiers postures tells us that this appeal will not be answer. After this groups gone, another one will replace it. And, like the mechanical grinding of gears, perhaps the same pathetic scene will play itself out again (as it has ever since).

The brutality of war was hardly shown more honestly, more realistically, or more dehuminizing before Goya. Have a look at most paintings on the slaughter of the innocent by Herod's army. Following neo-classical traditions, the composition would be ordered, dignified in its indignation and balanced in its brutality. "Allthough it occured, the brutality you witness is in the annals of history and now is to be contemplated," they seemed to say. A sense of future justice, a sense that maybe the wrongs will be righted again, seemed to be the message of these dignified tributes to injustice.

(Peter Paul Ruebens' Massacre of the Innocents)

But Goya seems to parody, in the most serious way, just how dehuminzing and unglorious violence is. There's no sense of redemption. That light that shines on the middle of the figure does not burst from a cloud, nor does it shine forth from angels--it belongs to the soilders who are going to make the kill.

The Christ-like gesture is also quite historically ironic. Here are a group of working class people who fought for their liberty against a foreign ruler--an emperor. Similarly, the Parisians rose against the aristocracy and their king. It was, just like the Spanish, in the name of liberty. Now Napolean returns the favor to Spain on behalf of the new French Empire. Napolean could defend himself, saying he was deposing decadent Bourbon rulers and replacing it with the more modern, liberated and culturally superior French society. He does have a point. Yet I cannot help but be reminded of Karl Marx ingenious quote--"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

The setting of the scene is the mountains of Pricipe Pio in central Madrid. Every day I go to work, my metro passes by this hill. This year is the bicentennial of the events of the second and third of May. All over Madrid, cultural events are being held in honor of these events. One of the products of this commeration is Jose Luis Garci's new film Sangre de May, which I saw. In brief, educational but overlong and poorly structured. Here's a trailer for the film.