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Hotspur🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 /
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2024-10-29 22:44:09

Hotspur🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦 on Nostr: "Young Man in the Costume of a Majo," Edouard Manet, 1863. Manet hardly needs an ...

"Young Man in the Costume of a Majo," Edouard Manet, 1863.

Manet hardly needs an introduction. But here he paints his brother in the costume of a majo, or lower-class Spanish dandy. Majos and majas would dress in exaggerated versions of traditional Spanish dress (like that impossibly broad sash!), be well mannered but cheeky, and sometimes would pick fights with the "Frenchified" upper classes who were abandoning traditional Spanish styles.

Dressing up as a majo or maja was a thrill for upper-crust Spaniards, though; Goya would paint a number of portraits of noblewomen as majas. The maja image itself, with comb and mantilla, flouncy dress and fan, became so iconic that it outlasted the majo style and became a cliche in its own right. The majo, sadly, has been replaced with the bullfighter.

I love his pose, and that snazzy outfits as a whole...but these days folks would be puzzled by a majo outfit at Halloween...

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

#Art #Realism #EdouardManet #Portraits #Majo

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