Olympia

ÉDOUARD MANET (1832—1883) Olympia. 1863, canvas, oil, 130.5 x 190
Today, no one doubts that Manet’s “Olympia” is one of the finest works of French painting. The richness of colors, the boldness of color contrasts, the subtleties of arrangement—delicate juxtapositions of color and tone, the breadth and freedom of painting technique—make this canvas an impressive pictorial spectacle in strength and expressiveness: harmonious, resonant, refined. However, Manet’s contemporaries, critics, and the public did not pay attention to the painting’s artistic merits; they spoke with outrage about its “immorality.” Manet based it on the classical type of nude depiction: he repeated the composition of Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” and partially Goya’s “Naked Maja.” He portrayed not a goddess or an odalisque, but a Parisian woman with a reputation ambiguous to the Salon audience. The artist persistently argued that the beauty of the human body and the things surrounding it is the beauty of painting itself, the beauty of the color with which the artist conveys his perception of the visible world. Not accepted at the 1865 Salon, this painting was acquired by the state only after Manet’s death in 1890 with funds collected by subscription by Claude Monet.