This article is a theoretical reflection upon the relationship existing between painting and history in whose tension arises the temporality phenomenon. This phenomenon is analyzed from the categories of irreversible time and pseudocyclic time represented in the work The Society of the Spectacle by the French theorist Guy Debord. In the tension of painting and historical event emerges the problem of the veracity of what is witnessed. This is analyzed from two pictorial models in art history: Jacques- Louis David and Francisco de Goya who, in an opossed manner under the categories of irreversible time and pseudocyclic time respectively contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of image temporality. To cap it all, assuming a critical position from Walter Benjamin's reflections the conclusion is that the historical painting veracity is feasible from the dialectics of the origin, a phenomenon through which image remits to the autonomous reality of the work of art.