While British troops fired into the crowd in Belfast in 1969, Seamus Heaney was suffering “only the bullying sun of Madrid”. In “Singing School”, the Ulster poet writes how he was urged to return to the province to testify directly to the violence there. Instead, though, he “retreats” to the cool of the Prado, where he finds: “Goya’s ‘Shootings of The Third of May’/covered a wall – the thrown-up arms/And spasm of the rebel, the helmeted/And knapsacked military, the efficient/Rake of the fusillade.”

The icon and source of all modern war art, Francisco Goya’s two great pictures, “The Second of May” and “The Third of May” have been extensively restored in time for the bicentenary of the Spanish uprising against Napoleon this May. They form the jewels in this major commemorative exhibition of Goya’s work, just opened at the Prado.