Where everything in Titian is soft, everything in Olympia’s world is hard and cold. Medium: Etching on blue laid paper, third and final state. Artist: Edouard Manet (French, Paris 18321883 Paris) Date: JanuaryMay 1867. Reproducing the recumbent nude on drapery on a bed, Manet replaces details - the loyal sleeping dog in the Titian painting becomes Olympia’s startled cat Venus’s braids become Olympia’s tied hair. Title: Olympia (large plate) Series/Portfolio: Strölin edition, 1905. Inspirations and influences: The source is Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) whose gaze is unambiguously inviting. Olympia, among other works by Manet, will be on display in the Metropolitan Museum. We glance from detail to detail, trying to make sense of the whole, yet always come back to a world fragmented, an eroticism of blunt fact. This fall, Édouard Manet ’s famed 1863 painting Olympia will travel from Paris to New York for the first time. We are still challenged by Olympia: she is so depthless that the eye cannot wander the picture as if in a painterly dream world. When it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1865, critics and crowd were scandalised. It is impossible to resolve the focus of her eyes, or mood: melancholy or contempt? This asymmetry is enhanced by the decoration in her hair and the turn of her head. Her big, black pupils are uneven in size. But it is Olympia’s look that is hardest to take. Her skin is a bright, glaring white there are no half-tones, so the visual transitions from light to shadow are harsh. His eye drifts to the way the bed linen is tucked in, to the ruffled white pillows, the expanse of sheet. Yet Manet’s attention is anything but riveted. Her face recurs in Manet’s pictures, including the jarring pastoral Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862 -63), in which she sits nude by two clothed men.ĭistinguishing features: The subject matter is sensational - a nude who, in the eyes of 19th-century observers, was clearly a prostitute, in her trashy mules with a bootlace for a necklace. Subject: Victorine Meurent (1844-1928), Manet’s favourite model. Olympia Edouard Manet - French Painter 1863 Paris, Musee dOrsay Oil on canvas 130.5 x 190 cm (51 3/8 x 74 3/4 in) Jpg: Mark Hardens Artchive.
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