The seventeenth-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez, who had a hold on me during those years, is counted amongst the influences on the French painter Manet. It was probably this chronology of influences that had organized my decision. Nonetheless, it is unsettlingly appropriate. Manet was responding to one of the most controversial political events of his time. The French intervention in Mexico had come to a disastrous end with the execution of their installed ruler, Emperor Maximilian, in 1867. There were no photographs of the incident. Manet had to rely on the stories he heard and the
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