Goya paintings restored to life

MADRID — While Spain celebrates the 200th anniversary of the beginning of its war of independence, the Prado Museum is displaying — newly cleaned and restored — the two paintings most emblematic of the struggle: Francisco de Goya’s “The 2nd of May 1808 in Madrid” (sometimes called “The Charge of the Mamelukes”) and “The 3rd of May in Madrid” (depicting executions of the insurrectionists).

Superb in composition and execution, the two paintings also stir the hearts of Spaniards long familiar with them as illustrations in schoolbooks. May 2 is the date the struggle for independence began.

“It has been traditionally thought that Goya portrayed executions on the Monte or Montana del Principe Pio,” says art historian Janis Tomlinson, author of a definitive book on Goya and chief of museums at the University of Delaware. Ms. Tomlinson, who wrote a chapter in the catalog for the Prado exhibit, “Goya in Times of War,” says other art historians writing in the catalog point out that executions took place in a variety of locations, many just outside the gates of the city. They suggest that Goya portrayed executions at the Gate of La Vega, which was torn down in 1820.

The exhibition focuses on Goya’s career from 1795, two years after he lost his hearing in an illness and began a new stage and style in his art, to 1820, the end of his work in Madrid and before he did the famous “Black Paintings.”

The large May 2 and May 3 paintings — each is 105 by 136 inches — date from 1814, although the events occurred in 1808. The paintings came to the Prado from the royal collection, but they were kept out of view. “May 2” was displayed in the late 1840s, and “May 3” in the 1860s.

In November 1936, early in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) that brought Gen. Francisco Franco to power, the Condor Division of Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe dropped bombs on downtown Madrid in its support of Franco. The bombing damaged part of the Prado, which had closed two months earlier, but the incident spurred the evacuation of 20,000 of the museum’s masterpieces as well as paintings taken there from other sites.

Goya’s paintings of the May 2 and 3 events were among those that left the Prado on 17 trucks and were taken to Valencia, east of Madrid on the Mediterranean coast. In 1938, when most of the paintings were taken north to Girona for safekeeping, the two Goya paintings were damaged in a crash in the village of Benicarlo. Packed together, the canvases suffered horizontal splits, but “it was ’The 2nd of May’ that suffered the greatest damage, and two small pieces of canvas painted with original paint and possibly in very poor condition were lost on the road,” writes Enrique Quintana, head of restoration at the Prado.

The damaged areas of “May 2” were patched and painted dark red — a so-called “neutral tint.” The red areas “really detracted from the composition of the painting,” Mr. Quintana says.

Ms. Tomlinson points out that the red areas distracted from the focus of the dagger held overhead by one of the freedom fighters, poised to castrate one of the fallen Mamelukes, who were Muslim mercenaries fighting for the French who, under Napoleon, had invaded Spain.

Both canvases were relined for more strength in 1938 in Girona by the liner and restorer of the Prado. They returned home to the Prado after the end of the war.

Based on black-and-white archive photographs taken before the civil war, restorers used a computer-manipulated stencil to reconstruct the missing paint work lost in the crash, Mr. Quintana says. After restoration and retouching for missing paint, the paintings are considerably brighter.

Ms. Tomlinson says Goya’s paintings after his illness of 1792-93 and deafness “show a break with his earlier work” in a turn toward more experimental subjects and media. The smaller cabinet paintings, such as those borrowed from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, show a new interest in — and criticism of — life in Spain, she says. He also began doing series of etchings: “The Caprices,” “The Horrors of War” and “Tauromaquia” (the art of bullfighting).

The exhibit’s almost 200 works include portraits of historical figures such as the Duke of Wellington; “The Family of Charles IV” of 1800; “The Duchess of Alba in White” of 1795 from the collection of the Alba Foundation in Madrid; “The Taking of Christ” twice, one from the Cathedral of Toledo, the other from the Prado; and a self-portrait of 1815.

One painting that was to be in the exhibition, “The Colossus,” has been left out of the show because of new doubts that it is by Goya. In the painting, a giant is straddling people fleeing from a battle.

“Goya in Times of War” is on view through July 13. The Prado is closed on Mondays.