Young man in Mayo costume

Painted in 1863 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this painting of a young man in a maja costume belongs to the series of Spanish-themed works that Manet produced in the early 1860s following the visit of the Camprubi ballet troupe to Paris. The maja — a Spanish working-class dandy associated with Goya's paintings of Madrid street life — gave Manet a subject that allowed both homage to the Spanish masters he revered and direct observation of performers and their costumes. The Metropolitan holds it alongside other Manet Spanish-period works as part of its comprehensive holdings of his early career.

The costume — embroidered jacket, broad sash, short breeches — provides a complex surface of pattern and texture that Manet renders with his characteristic directness. The figure stands against a neutral ground, his posture easy and self-possessed. The Spanish clothing's warm colours — ochre, rose, dark brown — are handled with the assured, slightly flat treatment of his Spanish period paintings.