The Second of May 1808

The Second of May 1808, painted in 1814 and paired with The Third of May as the two great commemorative canvases of the Spanish resistance to Napoleonic occupation, depicts the uprising of the Madrid populace against the Mameluke cavalry who were among the most feared elements of Napoleon's imperial forces. The Mamelukes — Egyptian cavalry recruited by Napoleon during his Egyptian campaign — were used partly because their exotic appearance and unfamiliarity to the Spanish public made them especially frightening, and Goya's depiction of them, with their turbans and curved swords, captures both their visual strangeness and the desperate violence of the street confrontation. The composition's dynamic energy — figures locked in hand-to-hand combat filling the entire picture surface — has a very different character from the stark confrontation of The Third of May; where the companion painting freezes a moment of execution into an almost liturgical stillness, The Second of May is continuous violent action. Together, the two paintings constitute the most powerful artistic response to the Peninsular War and one of the founding documents of modern political painting.

The composition is a whirlwind of violent action with no single focal point, conveying the chaos of street fighting. Goya's bold, slashing brushwork and vivid reds against earth tones create visceral immediacy that prefigures modern war painting.