[Emperor Maximilian's Firing Squad]

François Aubert

1867 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

Legend maintains that Maximilan paid each of the seven executors shown here one ounce of gold not to shoot him in the head; he wanted, the story asserts, his mother to see his face one last time when he was in his coffin. The French painter Edouard Manet turned his eye to the events of June 19, 1867, in his large oil Execution of the Emperor Maximilian (1867), now in the collection of the Kunsthalle in Mannheim, Germany.

Artist

François Aubert

Date

1867

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005