Heroic battle in the pulpit of the Church of San Agustín de Zaragoza in the second siege in 1809
1887. Oil on canvas.On display elsewhere
The National Exhibition of Fine Arts of 1887 included five canvases with themes from the Sieges of Zaragoza. The first of them, according to the Catalogue (no. 28), entitled Heroic Battle in the Pulpit of the Church of San Agustín de Zaragoza in the Second Siege in 1809, was presented by César Álvarez Dumont, who three years earlier had received a “Third Class” medal for his Heroic Defence of the Tower of San Agustín de Zaragoza in the War of Independence (P005584). This large format painting depicts the episode of the Second Siege of Zaragoza, which took place between 20 December 1808 and 21 February 1809, during the War of Independence (1808–1814). With numerous figures around the pulpit of the convent church of San Agustín – which becomes the protagonist of the painting – it is clear, as in few other works, that the defence of Zaragoza was a common endeavour, as, alongside the soldiers, there are people from the town and, at the top of the pulpit, next to the man firing his rifle, there is a nobleman or bourgeois with a powdered wig.
Los Sitios de Zaragoza. Catálogo de la exposición, Zaragoza, 2009, p.278, 292, 293
