How Goya’s “Third of May” Forever Changed the Way We Look at War

Francisco Goya's  The Third of May 1808—sometimes described as the greatest anti-war painting, the first modern work of art, and the artist’s unquestioned masterpiece—spent most of its first 40 years in storage. Commissioned in 1814 by the provisional Spanish government, it was coolly received and later transferred to the Prado Museum in Madrid. It wasn’t until 1872 that the museum bothered to list the painting in its catalogue. By that time, the horrors Goya had depicted were almost beyond living memory. But in 1814, they were as fresh for the people of Spain as the slaughter of protesters in Cairo, the gassing of Damascus, or the Boston bombing are for us today.

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