The French Revolution: Napoleon´s Power

Under Napoleon’s power, Goya was disgusted with the slaughter of his people. It made such an impression on the artist that in his painting, nothing was idealized. The fear on the Spanish fighters’ faces, the faceless troops, and all the gore of blood running in the streets was to show the horrendous truth in Spain. In the eighteenth century, depiction of warfare was focused on bloodless accounts of battle with little emotional impact. Goya’s painting, by contrast, presents no hero, rather a man terrified willing to die for his country. The man in the middle of the painting almost depicts Christ’s Crucifixion with the light centralized on him, the composition of the piece directs all eyes to him, and his face (the only face visible in the painting) full of emotion. All the executors are faceless, standing side-by-side almost configuring a creature without the ability of experiencing remorse or emotion and never will. Goya protested against human cruelty, but the depiction of this type of brutality will never come to an end, and it is part of our human nature; Goya’s intention was to evoke sympathy and disgust. He painted this as a commission six-years later. He was not a witness, but when he painted it he used his imagination to reflect the nature of power.

Karl Marx, who made one of the biggest impact after the French Revolution, was the most influential philosopher in the nineteenth-century. In Communist Manifesto in 1848, he describes the goals of Communism and the theories that underlying this government. Marx believed that the revolution was inevitable and necessary. Marx observed the working conditions in factories in England. He believed that laborers are making the money for the middle class, but the workers are not receiv...

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...his sister) will remember him. The values in literature were shifting to new ideas after the French Revolution: emphasis on nature, individuality, personal experiences, and the “common man” began to emerge.

The French Revolution was necessary and unavoidable. Artists, writers, and musicians were transitioning from everyday ordinary, reason, and controlled in the eighteenth century to the exotic, fantasy, and personal/individual self-expression post-revolution. Romanticism was influenced by the French Revolution, and instead of seeking for order by the government controlling nature, Romantics self-identified nature by direct communication with nature, and treating humans as each individual rather than scientific experiences. The Romantic Movement meant the revolt of contemporary artists, not to standards and expected stylization, but as they individually pleased.