Spanish Cavaliers

In 1859 Paris was mad for all things Spanish, and Manet, still in his twenties, had never once set foot in Spain. He built this small scene the way a young painter does, out of the art he admired. The knot of cavaliers comes from a picture in the Louvre he had copied, then believed to be by Velázquez, though it was later taken away from that name. The open doorway on the right he lifted straight from Velázquez's Las Meninas. The little boy in front is Léon Leenhoff, the child of Manet's household, who turns up again in other early works. Everything here is borrowed and rearranged, years before Manet finally travelled south and saw the real Spanish paintings for himself.