The Great Day of Girona
| The Great Day of Girona | |
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| Artist | Ramon Martí Alsina |
| Year | Date completed: 1863-64 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 496 cm × 1082 cm (16 ft 3 in × 35 ft 6 in) |
| Location | Museu d'Art de Girona, Girona |
The Great Day of Girona, originally El gran dia de Girona (Catalan pronunciation: [əɫ ˈɣɾan ˈdi.ə ðə ʒiˈɾonə]), is a large oil painting (4.96 × 10.82 m) by Ramon Martí Alsina. It is the largest easel painting in the history of Catalan art. The creation process took more than 10 years and led the artist nearly to financially ruin on several occasions. The painting became part of the collection of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and is exhibited at the Girona premises of the Catalan Government.
Due to the large size of the work, scholars suggest that it may have been an effort to compete with Marià Fortuny's Battle of Tetuan, a work commissioned by the council of Barcelona regarding the African War.
In 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, the painting was damaged during a bombardment while on exhibit at the Palau de les Belles Arts (Palace of the Fine Arts). To protect it from further damage, the work was rolled up and stored in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC). Seventy years after its deposit, the painting was restored between 2009 and 2010.
During the middle of the 19th century, history painting was highly regarded for its depictions of local heroes and patriotic events. Martí Alsina wanted to improve his reputation as a painter on a national level, despite the fact that he was already a lecturer at the Escola de la Llotja in Barcelona. One of the most direct ways of earning a professional reputation at the time was to win a competition such as the National Exhibition of Fine Arts (Exposició Nacional de Belles Arts), which was celebrated annually in Madrid. These competitions combined works of historical subject matter with epic and romantic content. In 1667, André Felibien, historian and theoretician of French Classicism, created a hierarchy of pictorial themes and ranked historical paintings in first place.
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