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Olympia
Édouard Manet · Realism & Academic
- Artist
- Édouard Manet (1832–1883)
- Date
- 1863
- Dimensions
- 130.5 x 190 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France
Olympia shows a naked young woman lying on a bed, looking straight at the viewer, while her maid brings her a bouquet of flowers from an admirer. When it was exhibited at the Salon of 1865, it caused one of the greatest scandals in the history of art.
A closer look
Manet based the pose on Titian’s Venus of Urbino, but turned the goddess into a contemporary Parisian courtesan. Her cool, direct gaze, the black ribbon around her neck, the slipper dangling from her foot and the black cat arching its back at the end of the bed replace mythology with modern reality. Manet’s flat lighting and strong contrasts, with almost no soft modelling, also shocked critics. Guards had to protect the painting from angry visitors.
History of the painting
Olympia caused such an uproar at the Salon of 1865 that two guards had to be posted to protect it from angry visitors, and Manet never managed to sell it. After his death in 1883 it remained with his widow, Suzanne. In 1889–90 Claude Monet organised a public subscription, raising about 20,000 francs from friends and admirers including Degas, Renoir and Rodin, to buy it and offer it to the state, fearing it would be sold to an American collector. It was accepted for the Musée du Luxembourg, and in 1907, at the insistence of Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, it was hung in the Louvre next to Ingres's Grande Odalisque.
More by Édouard Manet
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- The Balcony 1868
- The Railway 1873