Mademoiselle V. . . in the Costume of an Espada

Painted in 1862 and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mademoiselle V. in the Costume of an Espada depicts Victorine Meurent — Manet's most important model — dressed as a matador's assistant (espada) in a bullfighting arena, watching the bullfight from the left foreground while the arena action unfolds in miniature in the right background. The incongruity of a Parisian woman in a Spanish man's costume, combined with the abruptly discontinuous spatial relationship between foreground and background, makes this among Manet's most deliberately disorienting works.

The costume — black bolero jacket, pink cape, white breeches — is rendered with the flat, bold colour areas characteristic of Manet's early manner. Victorine's direct gaze confronts the viewer while her pose adapts a masculine costume to an unmistakably female body. The background arena scene is painted in miniature scale, creating a spatial disconnect that refuses conventional perspective recession. The paint surface is lean and direct.