Le Grand Jour de Gérone

Ramon Martí Alsina began this enormous canvas in 1863, more than 50 years after the event it shows: the day in September 1809 when the people of Girona held their walls against Napoleon's besieging army. The city fell in the end, after months of hunger and disease, but the defence became a point of Catalan pride, and Martí Alsina meant this as the first of a whole cycle on the Peninsular War and the sieges of Girona. The scene is vast, around 5 metres tall and 11 wide, crowded with townspeople and soldiers pushing up onto the ramparts. He was a realist, painting ordinary bodies under real strain rather than tidy heroes. He never finished the cycle, and this canvas is the only large part of it he completed.