Indeed, in his next several paintings of Victorine, Manet gradually reveals instead of conceals her body, his fascination with her body winning out over the impulse to control it. For instance, V. Meurent in the Costume of an Espada is not so much of a revelation of skin as of shape. In Armstrong’s words, V. Meurent in the Costume of an Espada reveals a “more ample and female” (Armstrong 148) body than The Street Singer, despite the male costume: the tight breeches reveal instead of conceal Victorine’s shapely thighs and the womanly curve of her stomach. This contradiction is not as strange as it may seem to a modern viewer. At bals, large parties where upper-class men mixed with lower-class women, dancers often donned male costume to achieve this same seductive effect. (This may, in fact, have been where Victorine and Manet met.) (Siebert 59) In this context, the revelation of Victorine’s body by the breeches becomes all the more sexually potent. The disguise Manet creates turns on him, emphasizing instead of hiding Victorine’s sexual power. Manet’s attempts to control Victorine are slowly losing out to his own fascination with her body.
Manet, Edouard. V. Meurent in the Costume of an Espada. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.