The execution of Maximilian
Manheim, Stadtisch Kunsthalle
At the same time as the huge Parisian triumph of the Exposition Universelle of 1867, international news arrived, casting a terrible pall over the fête. It was on 1 July, the very day on which the imperial couple were to distribute the prizes, that Paris learned of the execution of Maximilian, the puppet emperor set on the Mexican throne by Napoleon III. Like many of his contemporaries, Manet was greatly struck by the event. Indeed, in what was a rare foray into the historical genre, he chose a subject related to current affairs which had been largely avoided by other artists because of the censor. Taking his inspiration from Goya’s Tres de Mayo, a summary condemnation of another Napoleonic war, Manet chose the moment where the tension was at its highest: the firing squad execution of Maximilian and that of the two generals Mejia and Miramon. Greatly attached to this work, Manet never managed to exhibit it during the Second Empire, because the censor forbade it.