The Execution of Maximilian Lithograph by Manet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2023

Title: The Execution of Maximilian

Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 1832–1883 Paris)

Date: 1868, published in 1884

Medium: Lithograph on chine collé; first state of three

Dimensions: Image: 13 3/8 x 17 1/4in. (34 x 43.8cm)
Sheet: 17 1/2 x 23 3/4in. (44.5 x 60.3cm)

Classification: Prints

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1921

Object Number: 21.48


This is the print from which Manet took the composition of The Barricade in 1871 (on view in this gallery). Its subject occupied the artist for well over a year, resulting in four oil paintings—one of which Degas later owned—and this lithograph. The news of Maximilian’s execution in June 1867 provoked strong indignation against Napoleon III, who had imposed the Austrian archduke as emperor of Mexico and then withdrew the support of French forces in the face of a republican uprising. Manet based his composition on Francisco Goya’s Third of May, 1808 (1814), which he had seen in Madrid two years earlier.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/337623