"Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting"

Metropolitan Museum of Art
5th Avenue at 86th Street
March 4 to April 8, 2003

In 2003, the Metropolitan Museum offered an exhibition displaying the cultural context within which the creation of Bizet's Carmen occurred -- namely the reception in France, by French 19th-century painters, predominantly realist and impressionist painters, of Spanish visual culture.

The exhibition examined the impact of Spanish painting on French artists, presenting some 150 paintings by masters of Spain's Golden Age -- Velázquez, Murillo, Ribera, El Greco, and Zurbarán -- as well as masterpieces by the 19th-century French artists they influenced, among them Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Degas, and, most notably, Manet.

For further information, visit the exhibition's website:

"The French Taste for Spanish Painting"