[3] The image is based on a scene which occurred in Chinchón in December 1808, at a time when Goya's brother was living there as parish priest.

Goya shows the mutilated body of a rebel impaled on the branches of a tree at two points – through his anus and shoulder blade.

[4] The victim's head is turned towards the picture's viewer, in a motif that echoes the title of another work in the Disasters series - One cannot look.

[5] The figuration of the dead man is based in part on the Hellenistic fragment of a male nude, the Belvedere Torso, by an Athenian sculptor.

[6] However, he subverts the classical motifs used in war art by adding a degree of theatre – the branch through the anus, animated shoulders and close framing.