Olympia
A prostitute looks coolly at the viewer, as if we were her next client. Manet took Titian’s Venus and moved her to contemporary Paris. The scandal was total.
Flat lighting and hard outlines instead of soft modelling; the black cat replaces Titian’s faithful dog.
Édouard Manet painted Olympia in 1863. He exhibited it at the Salon in Paris in 1865, where it caused one of the greatest scandals in the history of art. Visitors laughed, jeered and even tried to damage the picture, and in the end the Salon posted guards and hung it high up, out of reach.
A naked woman lies on a bed, looking coolly and directly at the viewer. She has an orchid in her hair, a black ribbon round her neck, a bracelet and a single slipper on her foot. Her hand rests in her lap. Behind her stands a Black maid holding out a large bouquet of flowers, probably from a client. At the foot of the bed stands a black cat with its tail raised. The sheets and pillows are white and crisp, and the shawl she lies on has a floral pattern.
The picture deliberately draws on Titian’s Venus of Urbino, which Manet had copied in Florence. But where Titian’s woman is a goddess or a bride, Manet’s is a prostitute in contemporary Paris. The name Olympia was common among courtesans. Titian’s sleeping dog, a symbol of fidelity, has been replaced by a black cat, associated with sexuality and bad luck.
The model for the woman was Victorine Meurent, whom Manet painted several times and who later became a painter herself. The model for the maid was called Laure. She was long overlooked by art history but has received more attention in recent years, including in the exhibition Black Models in Paris in 2019.
The manner of painting was as provocative as the subject. Manet used a flat, frontal light that does away with soft modelling. The body is pale and sharply outlined. The contrast with the dark background is stark. Critics thought the body looked dirty and flat. But Manet’s painting pointed towards a new art in which the surface and colour of the painting mattered more than illusion. The brushstrokes are broad and visible, and Manet simplified the forms in a way that many saw as careless.
The picture remained unsold. After Manet’s death, in 1890 Claude Monet organised a subscription to buy it and present it to the French state. It was first shown at the Musée du Luxembourg and entered the Louvre in 1907. Since 1986 it has hung in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
The writer Émile Zola defended Manet and called him one of the great painters of the future. Today Olympia is seen as one of the first images of modernism. It shows how art could challenge the viewer’s gaze and question ideal images. Artists such as Cézanne, Picasso and many contemporary artists have made their own versions of the picture. It has also been discussed from perspectives such as gender, class and race, and it is a recurring example in teaching about the gaze in art.