The Second of May 1808

1814

Oil on canvas, 268.5 × 347.5 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Madrid townspeople attack French cavalry with knives in a crowded street fight. Painted at the war's end, it looks back to the uprising that opened Spain's war against Napoleon's occupation.

Commissioned through the Regency Council; frame invoices billed to the King's Bedchamber suggest the king paid to frame it for the Royal Palace.
Look at the turbaned Mamelukes of Napoleon's Imperial Guard being dragged from their horses.
A truck carrying it crashed in 1938. Work in 2007–08 made the colors bright again and hid the losses, guided by old photographs.
Bodies and blades tangle around the white horse at centre, and nobody in particular leads the fight. Janis Tomlinson (UC Berkeley talk, 2011) reads the Spanish attackers as committing atrocities too, so neither side looks heroic.
Moved from the Royal Palace to the Prado, whose catalogue lists it from 1872.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)