Politics and Contemporary Events

Event

• Spain traditional - King, Queen PM Godoy 'unholy trinity'
• Penisular War 1808-14, Napoleon to invade Portugual but turns on Spain instead
• 2nd May Marmedukes attack, round up and shoot anyone with weapon, many innocent
• Commissioned by King Francis, Goya may just be re-gaining patronage after Inquisition
• Sympathies with Enlightenment, Disasters of War condemns French and Spainish

Symbolism

• Spanish matyrs juxtaposed with French automations
• Central man in cruxifiction pose, stimgata, hill Golgotha, larger (Saints), papal colours
• Innocence- white and mother and child, image of matyrdom and sacrifice

Style

• Romantic - drama, pathos, raw emotional brushstrokes - immediacy, blood and gore
• Dramatic chiaroscuro, pathetic fallacy, worst of humanity

Event

• People cast adrift by French government, 'shipwreck of France'
• Captain De Chaumereys inexperience, shipwrecked, 120 on raft, abandoned for 13 days
• 15 survived, starvation, suicide, murder, cannibalism - leaked by surgeon Savigny to Journal Des Debates - outraged public and showed Bourbon favouritism of upper class
• Abolitionist sympathies- black man Jean Charles at apex

Classical

• Traditional double pyramid composition, monumental size
• Idealised not starving, influence of Michelangelo's Last Judgement
• Enlightenent values in thinker pose, Gros' 'Plauge Victims at Jaffa' in depiction of dying

Romantic

• Sublime (actually calm), wave about to crash down, small Argos- could be hallucination
• Cannibalism- axe, and Ugolino, early studies of man eating arm- dark side of humanity
• Visited morgues and made studies e.g. in Heads of Torture Victims

Event

• 3 day revolution against Charles X's 4 Ordiances- censorship and reduced voting rights
• Wounded figure printmaker - most affected
• 28th July 4000 baricades erected, Delacroix not there, but contributes through painting
• Red on cap had to be toned down, bought by Ministery of Interior and hidden away

Symbolism

• Liberty personified- unidealised, classical chiton, tricolor flag (also on Notre Dame)
• Phrigian cap- symbol of freed slaves worn by Sans Culottes
• Marianne adopted by Jacobins in 1792, secular Madonna

Stylistic

• Movement and violence of color, but classical pyramidal composition
• Sublime power of crowd, discussed by Burke
• Revolution grim- dead bodies, soldier with visible pubic hair, print-maker wounded, Liberty could be a vision before his death

Academy

• In Pavilion of Real after rejection from Universal Exhibition, friends who helped him on right- Baudelaire, Proudhon (Property is Theft) and Champfluery
• 'News is the cemetary of ideas' - skull on paper, death to critics, back to nude = back to academy, but nude also unconventially unidealised and naked
• Subverts hierarchy of genres with landscape, crucifices traditional artists, rejects Romantic
• Him at centre - art about the individual
• Champions low art - woodcut influence, children as the naive and untrained eye

Politics

• On left- 'the people', criticism of Napoleon III as poacher who 'poached' power
• Archille Fould - Jew with money box, assisted Napoleon 
• Catholic preacher Louis Veuillot representing old regime, Carnot the turncoat
• Peasants of Flagery on wall behind - blurs class boundaries, influence of 1848 Communist Manifesto

Style

• Large history painting sized, disorganised with no clear focus, no drama, use of palette knife
• Unidentified people, amibgious class, unidealised, ruddy-faced
• 'the burial of Romanticism' - gloomy, mundane

Influences

• Black and white- cheap prints/wood cuts/ political pamphlets in rural France
• Little depth- medieval painting
• Baudelaire's view that aritsts should paint modern life, no narrative

Revolutionary

• Explose reaction at Salon, 'deliberately ugly', places critics/viewer in the grave
• Support for the people, 'can see the engine of revolution', revolution in countryside
• Pall Bearers wear hats of Revolution's police, influence of Proudhon and Champfluery