The shooting of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico
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| The death of Maximilian |
|---|
| Édouard Manet , 1868–69 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 252 × 305 cm |
| Kunsthalle Mannheim |
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The shooting of Emperor Maximilian is a picture by Édouard Manet painted in 1868/69 . The painting, the last of four versions, is in the Kunsthalle Mannheim . The picture is based on the historical events of the execution on June 19, 1867 of Emperor Maximilian , a brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria , near the city of Querétaro in Mexico .
Image motif and story
The painting shows the moment when the first volley is fired at the condemned. Maximilian, wearing a Mexican sombrero , stands between two of his generals, Miguel Miramón on the right and Tomás Mejía on the left . Mejía has already been hit by bullets from the soldiers standing in front of him. The soldiers in this picture are wearing French uniforms, although the real execution was carried out by Mexicans. The execution of a group of Mexicans is observed over a wall that separates the scene from the landscape. Moved into the foreground, an officer is impassively handling his weapon. Manet signed the picture on the lower left with his name and the date of the shooting , not the date the picture was completed.
Manet certainly knew The Shooting of the Insurgents by Francisco de Goya , whose pictures he had seen during his visit to the Prado in Madrid . But Manet's way of depiction differs significantly from that famous picture: the night becomes a bright summer day, and Goya's dramatically moving, spatially staggered scene gives way to a strict, flat structure organized at right angles on a narrow spatial stage. The rifles are parallel to the image, aimed almost at the delinquents, and the wall can hardly serve as a bullet trap here, but rather forms a rear boundary parallel to the screen. "One of the trademarks of Manet's art is the return of what is represented to the surface dimension" (Körner).
The writer Émile Zola summed up the message of the picture with the words: "France shoots Maximilian". This message was also understood by the imperial censors. The picture could not be exhibited at the Salon in 1869 due to pressure from the authorities. Manet was not even allowed to publish a lithograph made a year earlier. On the subject of the shooting of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico , Manet made a total of four oil paintings in addition to the lithograph between 1867 and 1869. The first version (on display today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston ), however, still shows a firing squad in Mexican uniforms. All four oil paintings are outside France , they hang in Boston, Copenhagen ( Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek ) , London ( National Gallery ) and Mannheim ( Kunsthalle ) .
literature
- Hans Körner: Edouard Manet: dandy, flaneur, painter . Munich 1996, pp. 109-115.
- Rose-Marie Hagen, Rainer Hagen: Masterpieces in detail. Image surveys. Taschen, Köln et al. 2000, ISBN 3-8228-6384-X , p. 416 ff.
- Oskar Bätschmann : Edouard Manet, The death of Maximilian. An art monograph ( Insel-Taschenbuch 1482). Insel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1993, ISBN 3-458-33182-4 .
- Edouard Manet and the Execution of Maximilian: an exhibition by the Department of Art, Brown University, Bell Gallery, List Art Center; February 21 through March 22, 1981 . Providence, Rhode Island: Dep. of Art, Brown Univ., 1981
- Norbert Schneider : History painting. From the late Middle Ages to the 19th century. Cologne u. a. 2010, pp. 214-218.
