Francisco Goya’s vision of war is powerful and urgent

The line of drably uniformed infantrymen, rifles aimed, forms a forceful diagonal across the right side of the painting, a machine of terror. Their target is a terrified rebel in a white shirt, his arms flung upwards in vulnerability and defiance, imitating Christ on the cross. His comrades cover their faces. Several already lie inert on the ground in pools of blood.

The subject of Francisco Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” (pictured), also known as “The Executions”, is the reprisals exacted by Napoleon’s troops after a rebellion by the populace of Madrid, portrayed in a companion painting, all slashing daggers and sabres. Yet it is also a universal indictment of violence. “It’s a work of today, of Ukraine, of all wars,” says Gudrun Maurer of the Prado museum in Madrid, where it hangs. “You could put it in a square in Kyiv and people would understand it.”