The dislocation of Suzon's world is deliberate. Paris is a hall of mirrors where Suzon floats helplessly, clinging to her bar. The flowers are a touching attempt to preserve a little humanity, as are her neat blue clothes and whole demeanour. It's amazing that contemporary critics saw her as a prostitute.

And who are you? The top-hatted stranger, of course, the Jack the Ripper whose ghostly reflection approaches her with such menace in the mirror. Manet captures the coolness, cruelty and glamour of modern life. This is one of the keystones of modern art.

Inspirations and influences: A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is a modern version of Velazquez's Las Meninas (1656-7), the most profound meditation on the portrait. In Las Meninas, ostensibly a picture of the royal Infanta and her retinue of children, pets and dwarf, Velazquez includes the king and queen reflected in a mirror at the back of this palace apartment. He himself stands painting them on a vast canvas looking at us, and we are the royal eye, looking back at the world that exists for our regal gaze. Manet worshipped Velazquez, and transferred this aesthetic of reflection to modern times, to create a world that only exists in mirrors; this turns the viewer into a spectral, disturbing presence, part of the crowd that Suzon looks at with such disillusion. The 20th-century painter whose portraits owe most to Manet was the flatly ironic Andy Warhol.