4Maximilian, a member of the Hapsburg family of Austria, had been installed in power in Mexico by Napoleon III of France as a 'puppet emperor'5 with aim of forcing Mexico to pay its foreign debts and establish a European presence there.6 However, it became a failure miserably, ending with the execution of Maximilian and two of his generals by firing squad on June 19, 1867. It seems Manet was irritated and started work on the depiction of Maximilian's execution soon after the first reports of it had reached Paris at the beginning of July 1867. Correspondingly, impact from their horrible family's 7experience during China's 1966-1967 Cultural Revolution8 and grievance towards Mao Zedong and the Chinese government, the Gao Brothers create works, notably The Execution of Christ, which 'ranges from the political and satirical to questions of material and spiritual spaces, and takes a humanitarian stance that questions the role government and the individual play within contemporary Chinese society since 1985.9' Thus, it can be seen that both of them are critical of the dark reign of the role governments and express their disdain for brutality of significant political incident or war through visual methods ironically, even though they are of different origin and in different period. .
Similarities and differences in visual compositions and tone: .
Since the composition of The Execution of Christ is a direct echo of The Execution of Maximilian as noted above, both depicts the firing squad and the condemned men. In The Execution of Maximilian I, there are 3 victims, who are the Emperor Maximilian (fig. 5) in the center and his two Mexican ally-generals, Mejía on his right and Miramón on his left facing 7 firing squad, and the former – in a show of dignity and loyalty – movingly clasps his hand in their final moment. Also, to a certain extent, the way Manet has set the scene seems oddly detached from the dreadful violence it implies.
Edouard Manet On January 29, 1832, Edouard Manet was born into a high-class family in Paris, France. His mother, Eugenie-Desiree Fournier, was the goddaughter of Charles Bernadotte, the Crown Prince of Sweden. Eduardo's father, Augusta Manet was a magistrate and an officer in the Ministry of Jus...
During the 1600's in Europe, men controlled women with accusations and the public executions of women and Barstow (1994) demonstrates an excellent example of this with the case of Bavarian, Anna Pappenheimer, who was a poor married woman who helped support her family by begging o...
In 1864 they even installed a European prince, Ferdinand Maximilian, as emperor of Mexico, although Maximilian"s place was secured only by the presence of French troops.Resistance to Maximilian came from to quarters: From the Mexicans themselves led by Benito Juarez, the great Liberal leader who was pushed out of his presidency by the French invasion; and from the United States. ... Furthermore, Juarez"s forces were daily growing in strength, isolating Maximilian and his French troops from their supporters in Mexico, largely Conservatives who had accepted Maximilian as a tool in their long str...
Robespierre did not feel that this cleansing process could be done without ample violence and public displays of governmental power through execution by decapitation. The Committee of Public Safety utilized the "Mob" mentality of Paris and made her public squares (execution grounds) equal to Rome's coliseum. ... If we are to study history, it must be to some purpose, and from this we can learn how the use of fear, aggression, terror, and mass public executions affected a government, a nation, as well as individual people involved in the ordeal that it became simply because they were in ...
Monte Cristo reveals his twisted feelings, that he has accumulated since his prison experience, toward human suffering to the reader when he has just showed Franz and Albert his window over looking an execution... " I will deprive you of seeing a man guillotined, but there is still the mazzolata, which is an extraordinary and interesting form of punishment when you see it for the first time, and even for the second time.- (p.192) He tells of his fascination for this type of execution. ... In the end, Dantes learns to love another, first by agreeing to help Maximilian Morrel in the pur...
Machiavelli himself, shortly after the execution of Savanarola, became Secretary of the Second Chancery, which was to make him widely known among his contemporaries as the "Florentine Secretary." ... His Report on France was written after he completed three assignments for his office in that country; the Report on Germany was prepared as a result of a mission to the court of Emperor Maximilian. ...
