Spanish Matador by Edouard Manet Cushion

The matador is the illustrious Cayetano Sanz y Pozas (1821–1890), who Manet saw in action during an 1865 trip to Spain—his only visit, despite a longstanding fascination with seventeenth-century Spanish art. This canvas, the first of the full-length figure paintings that Manet completed after studying the works of Velázquez in Madrid, was made upon his return to France. Unlike the artist’s previous depictions of bullfighters, Cayetano Sanz carries a proper red cape. Manet showed the picture, along with some twenty others on Spanish themes, at his solo exhibition in a pavilion adjacent to the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris.