The Third of May 1808 in the context of "Extrajudicial execution"

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⭐ Core Definition: The Third of May 1808

The Third of May 1808 in Madrid (commonly known as The Third of May 1808) and also known, in Spanish, as El tres de mayo de 1808 en Madrid or Los fusilamientos de la montaña del Príncipe Pío, or Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo, is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of Madrid in 1808 at the start of the Peninsular War. Along with its companion piece of the same size, The Second of May 1808 (or The Charge of the Mamelukes), it was commissioned by the provisional government of Spain at Goya's own suggestion shortly after the ousting of the French occupation and the restoration of King Ferdinand VII.

The painting's content, presentation, and emotional force secure its status as a ground-breaking, archetypal image of the horrors of war. Although it draws on many sources from both high and popular art, The Third of May marks a clear break from convention. By diverging from the traditions of Christian art and traditional depictions of war, it has no distinct precedent, and is acknowledged as one of the first paintings of the modern era. According to the art historian Kenneth Clark, it is "the first great picture which can be called revolutionary in every sense of the word, in style, in subject, and in intention".

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The Third of May 1808 in the context of Peace symbols

A number of peace symbols have been used many ways in various cultures and contexts. The dove and olive branch was used symbolically by early Christians and then eventually became a secular peace symbol, popularized by a Dove lithograph by Pablo Picasso after World War II. In the 1950s, the "peace sign", as it is known today (also known as "peace and love"), was designed by Gerald Holtom as the logo for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), a group at the forefront of the peace movement in the UK, and adopted by anti-war and counterculture activists in the US and elsewhere. The symbol is a superposition of the semaphore signals for the letters "N" and "D", taken to stand for "nuclear disarmament", while simultaneously acting as a reference to Goya's The Third of May 1808 (1814) (aka "Peasant Before the Firing Squad").

The V hand signal and the peace flag also became international peace symbols.

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The Third of May 1808 in the context of Spanish art

Spanish art has been an important contributor to Western art and Spain has produced many famous and influential artists including Velázquez, Goya and Picasso. Spanish art was particularly influenced by France and Italy during the Baroque and Neoclassical periods, but Spanish art has often had very distinctive characteristics, partly explained by the Moorish heritage in Spain (especially in Andalusia), and through the political and cultural climate in Spain during the Counter-Reformation and the subsequent eclipse of Spanish power under the Bourbon dynasty.

The prehistoric art of Spain had many important periods-it was one of the main centres of European Upper Paleolithic art and the rock art of the Spanish Levant in the subsequent periods. In the Iron Age large parts of Spain were a centre for Celtic art, and Iberian sculpture has a distinct style, partly influenced by coastal Greek settlements. Spain was conquered by the Romans by 200 BC and Rome was rather smoothly replaced by the Germanic Visigoths in the 5th century AD, who soon Christianized. The relatively few remains of Visigothic art and architecture show an attractive and distinct version of wider European trends. With the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in the 8th century there was a notable Moorish presence in art specially in Southern Iberia. Over the following centuries the wealthy courts of Al-Andalus produced many works of exceptional quality, culminating in the Alhambra in Granada, right at the end of Muslim Spain.

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The Third of May 1808 in the context of Extrajudicial killing

An extrajudicial killing (also known as an extrajudicial execution or an extralegal killing) is the deliberate killing of a person without the lawful authority granted by a judicial proceeding. It typically refers to government authorities, whether lawfully or unlawfully, targeting specific people for death, which in authoritarian regimes often involves political, trade union, dissident, religious and social figures. The term is typically used in situations that imply the human rights of the victims have been violated. Deaths caused by legal police actions (such as self defense) or legal warfighting on a battlefield are generally not included, even though military and police forces are often used for killings seen by critics as illegitimate. The label "extrajudicial killing" has also been applied to organized, lethal enforcement of extralegal social norms by non-government actors, including lynchings and honor killings.

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