The Third of May 1808
El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid
French soldiers shoot the people of Madrid in the night, a man in a white shirt flinging up his arms before them.
On 2 May 1808 Madrid rose against Napoleon's army; that night and the next morning the French shot the prisoners they had taken. Six years later, when the French had gone, Goya painted the uprising and the executions.
The soldiers are a faceless row of backs and rifles; the man they aim at, lit by a lantern on the ground, holds out his arms like Christ on the cross, a wound in his palm. Its truth about war has been followed ever since, by Manet and by Picasso's Guernica. Stand before it in 3D ›
More in The Prado
Las MeninasDiego Velázquez, 1656
Saturn Devouring His SonFrancisco de Goya, c. 1819–1823
The Garden of Earthly DelightsHieronymus Bosch, c. 1490–1510
The Nobleman with his Hand on his ChestEl Greco, c. 1580
The Triumph of DeathPieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562
The Descent from the CrossRogier van der Weyden, c. 1435
