Goya - May 3, 1808 (1814), oil on canvas, 266x345 cm, held in the Prado Museum, Madrid. Goya (1746-1828) is Spain's most representative Romantic painter. He studied in Rome, Italy from 1767 to 1771, and in 1786 served as a court painter for King Charles IV, leaving behind numerous radiant portraits of the royal family. In 1792, sudden deafness shaped his life's work; he left the court for civil society, experiencing the hardships of the people and beginning a series of folk realism. His consciousness was awakened by the Spanish people's uprising against Napoleon's rule and suppression starting in 1810, leading to war series and finally the striking Black Paintings, exposing the cruelty of war and human tragedy. In 1823, opposing the Spanish regime, he went into self-exile in Bordeaux, France, dying there in 1828. His works are diverse: brutal like The Burial of the Sardine, tragic like May 3, 1808 and May 2, 1808. Compassionate, barbaric, and disastrous, the Black Paintings depict war and refugee nightmares between 1810 and 1823. Do not forget exquisite female portraits, such as the Portrait of the Duchess of Solana, and striking paintings of Maya reclining on a sofa, clothed and nude. Under his liberation of form and color, modern art began, laying the foundation for Manet's modernist consciousness. May 3, 1808 is one of Goya's masterpieces from the series exposing Napoleon's cruel repression of Spain starting in 1810, followed by 33 metaphorical bullfighting prints and his most famous compassionate Black Paintings (such as the gruesome painting of Saturn devouring his children). These shocking paintings express the extremity of human disaster and existential tension. The massacre of innocents on May 3 takes place at dawn in rural hills, where a line of Napoleon's soldiers uniformly shoots unarmed civilians. The scene is divided into two; tension concentrates on the civilian on the right raising his hands in a white shirt, with a senseless expression of death, and corpses wailing beneath his feet. Surrounding crowds show uneasy expressions: some clench their hands, tighten nerves and will, look up helplessly, or cover their faces. Opposite them, a row of soldiers on the left focuses intently on aiming at the civilians, constructing an extraordinary scene of cruelty, made more dramatic by the contrast of darkness and light. The painter here shows immense moral courage, protesting the brutal regime and paying highest tribute to the Spanish people. Goya's political participation, using painting as resistance, became the precursor to Picasso's Guernica.