The purposeful incongruities in Manet's pictures of the 1860s remind the viewer—much like the title he gave this work—that art is contrived from models and costumes: it is fundamentally the product of abstract harmonies and color and not of convincing illusionism. Here Manet dressed his model, Victorine Meurent (1844–1928), as a man, put her in shoes unsuitable for bullfighting, gave her a cape of the wrong hue, and made no effort to integrate her with the background scenes taken from a set of Goya prints.

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