Mane Olympia. Sexual secrets of Olympia: a guide to the most scandalous painting by Edouard Manet

1863 Oil on canvas. 130.5x190 cm.
Orsay Museum. Paris.

As soon as Olympia has time to wake up from sleep,
A black messenger with an armful of spring before her;
That is the messenger of a slave who cannot be forgotten,
The night of love turns into flowering days.

Zachary Astruc

For us, “Olympia” is as classic as the paintings of the old masters, so it is not easy for a modern art lover to understand why a scandal erupted around this painting, first shown to the public at the exhibition of the Paris Salon of 1865, the likes of which Paris had never seen. It got to the point that they had to assign armed guards to Manet’s work, and then completely hang it from the ceiling so that the canes and umbrellas of indignant visitors could not reach the canvas and damage it.

Newspapers unanimously accused the artist of immorality, vulgarity and cynicism, but critics especially criticized the painting itself and the young woman depicted in it: “This brunette is disgustingly ugly, her face is stupid, her skin is like a corpse,” “This is a female gorilla made by made of rubber and depicted completely naked, /…/, I advise young women expecting a child, as well as girls, to avoid such impressions.” “The Batignolles Washerwoman” (Manet’s workshop was located in the Batignolles quarter), “Venus with a Cat”, “a sign for a booth in which a bearded woman is shown”,"yellow-bellied odalisque"... While some critics were sophisticated in their wit, others wrote that“art that has fallen so low is not even worthy of condemnation.”

Edouard Manet. Breakfast on the grass. 1863

No attacks on the Impressionists (with whom Manet was friendly, but did not identify himself) are comparable to those that befell the author of Olympia. There is nothing strange in this: the impressionists, in search of new subjects and new expressiveness, moved away from the classical canons, Manet crossed another line - he conducted a lively, uninhibited dialogue with the classics.

The scandal surrounding Olympia was not the first in Manet’s biography. In the same year, 1863, as “Olympia,” the artist painted another significant painting, “Breakfast on the Grass.” Inspired by the painting from the Louvre, Giorgione’s “Rural Concert” (1510), Manet reinterpreted its plot in his own way. Like a Renaissance master, he presented naked ladies and dressedmen. But if Giorgione's musicians are dressed in Renaissance costumes, Manet's heroes are dressed in the latest Parisian fashion.

Giorgione. Country concert. 1510

The location and poses of the characters Mane borrowed from the engraving artist XVI century Marcantonio Raimondi "The Judgment of Paris", made from a drawing by Raphael. Manet's painting (originally called "Bathing") was exhibited in the famous "Salon of the Rejected" in 1863, where works rejected by the official jury were shown, and extremely shocked the public.

It was customary to depict naked women only in paintings with mythological and historical subjects, so Manet’s canvas, in which the action was transferred to modern times, was considered almost non-pornographic. It is not surprising that after this the artist had difficulty deciding to exhibit “Olympia” at the next Salon in 1865: after all, in this painting he “encroached” on another masterpiece classical art- a painting from the Louvre “Venus of Urbino” (1538), painted by Titian. In his youth, Manet, like other artists of his circle, copied a lot of classical paintings of the Louvre, including (1856) a painting by Titian. Subsequently working on Olympia, he gave a new meaning to a composition that was well known to him with amazing freedom and courage.

Marcantonio Raimondi.
Judgment of Paris. First quarter 16th century

Let's compare the pictures. Titian's painting, which was supposed to decorate a large chest for a wedding trousseau, glorifies the joys and virtues of marriage. In both paintings, a naked woman lies with her right hand resting on pillows and her left hand covering her womb.

Venus coquettishly tilted her head to the side, Olympia looks directly at the viewer, and this gaze reminds us of another painting, “The Nude Swing” by Francisco Goya (1800). The background of both paintings is divided into two parts by a strict vertical line descending towards the woman’s womb.

Titian. Venus of Urbino. 1538

On the left are dense dark draperies, on the right are bright spots: Titian has two maids busy with a chest of clothes, Manet has a black maid holding a bouquet. This luxurious bouquet (most likely from a devotee) replaced roses (the symbol of the goddess of love) in Manet’s painting. right hand Titian's Venus. A white dog is curled up at Venus’s feet, a symbol of marital fidelity and family comfort; on Olympia’s bed, a black cat flickers with green eyes, “coming” into the picture from the poems of Charles Baudelaire, Manet’s friend. Baudelaire saw in the cat a mysterious creature that takes on the traits of its owner or mistress, and wrote philosophical poems about cats and cats:

"House spirit or deity,
This prophetic idol judges everyone,
And it seems that our things -
The farm is his personal.”

Edouard Manet. "Olympia". Fragment.

Pearl earrings in the ears andmassive bracelet on Olympia's right handManet borrowed from Titian's painting, but he added several important details to his canvas. Olympia lies on an elegant shawl with tassels, on her feet are golden pantolets, in her hair is an exotic flower, on her neck is a velvet like a large pearl, which only emphasizes the defiant nudity of the woman. Viewers of the 1860s unmistakably determined from these attributes that Olympia was their contemporary, that the beauty who took the pose of the Venus of Urbino was nothing more than a successful Parisian courtesan.

Francisco Goya. Nude Maha. OK. 1800

The title of the painting aggravated its “indecency.” Let us recall that one of the heroines of the popular novel (1848) and drama of the same name (1852) by Alexandre Dumas the Younger “Lady of the Camellias” was called Olympia. In Paris in the mid-19th century, this name was for some time a common noun for “ladies of the demimonde.” It is not known exactly to what extent the name of the painting was inspired by the works of Dumas and who - the artist himself or one of his friends - had the idea to rename "Venus" to "Olympia", but this name stuck. A year after the painting was created, the poet Zachary Astruc sang Olympia in his poem “Daughter of the Island,” lines from which, which became the epigraph to this article, were placed in the catalog of the memorable exhibition.

Manet “offended” not only the morality, but also the aesthetic sense of the Parisians.To today’s viewer, the slender, “stylish” Olympia (Manet’s favorite model, Quiz Meran, posed for the picture) seems no less attractive than Titian’s feminine Venus with her rounded forms. But Manet’s contemporaries saw Olympia as an overly thin, even angular person with non-aristocratic features. In our opinion, her body against the background of blue and white pillows radiates living warmth, but if we compare Olympia with the unnaturally pink languid Venus, painted by the successful academician Alexandre Cabanel in the same 1863, we will better understand the public’s reproaches: Olympia’s natural skin color seems yellow and the body flat.

Alexander Cabanel. Birth of Venus. 1865

Manet, who before other French artists became interested in Japanese art, refused to carefully convey volume and work out color nuances. The lack of expression of volume in Manet’s painting is compensated, as in Japanese prints, by the dominance of line and contour, but to the artist’s contemporaries the painting seemed unfinished, carelessly, even ineptly painted. Just a couple of years after the Olympia scandal, Parisians, who became acquainted with Japanese art at the World Exhibition (1867), were captivated and fascinated by it, but in 1865 many, including the artist’s colleagues, did not accept Manet’s innovations. So Gustave Courbet compared Olympia to “the queen of spades from a deck of cards that has just come out of the bath.” “The tone of the body is dirty, and there is no modeling,” echoed the poet Théophile Gautier.

Manet solves the most complex coloristic problems in this picture. One of them is the rendering of shades of black, which Manet, unlike the Impressionists, often and willingly used, following the example of his favorite artist, Diego Velazquez. A bouquet in the hands of a black woman, disintegrating into separate strokes, gave art critics reason to say that Manet made a “revolution of the colorful spot,” established the value of painting as such, regardless of the subject, and thereby opened new way artists of subsequent decades.

Edouard Manet. Portrait of Emile Zola. 1868
In the upper right corner there is a reproduction of “Olympia” and a Japanese engraving.

Giorgione, Titian, Raphael, Goya, Velazquez, aesthetics Japanese prints and... Parisians of the 1860s. In his works, Manet strictly followed the principle that he himself formulated: “Our duty is to extract from our era everything that it can offer us, without forgetting what was discovered and found before us.” This vision of modernity through the prism of the past was inspired by Charles Baudelaire, who wasNot only famous poet, but also an influential art critic. A true master, according to Baudelaire, must “feel the poetic and historical meaning of modernity and be able to see the eternal in the ordinary.”

Manet did not want to belittle the classics or mock them, but to raise modernity and contemporaries to high standards, to show that the Parisian dandies and their friends are the same ingenuous children of nature as Giorgione’s characters, and the Parisian priestess of love, proud of her beauty and power over hearts, as beautiful as the Venus of Urbino.« We are not used to seeing such a simple and sincere interpretation of reality,” wrote Emile Zola, one of the few defenders of the author of Olympia.

"Olympia" in the Orsay Museum.

In the 1870s, Manet achieved long-awaited success: the famous art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel bought about thirty works by the artist. But Manet considered Olympia his best painting and did not want to sell. After Manet's death (1883), the painting was put up for auction, but there was no buyer for it. In 1889, the painting was included in the exhibition"A hundred years French art" , y built at the World Exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the Great french revolution . The image of the Parisian Venus won the heart of a certain American philanthropist, and he wanted to buy the painting. But the artist’s friends could not allow Manet’s masterpiece to leave France. On the initiative of Claude Monet, they collected 20 thousand francs by public subscription, bought “Olympia” from the artist’s widow and donated it to the state. The painting was included in the painting collection of the Luxembourg Palace, and in 1907, through the efforts of the then Chairman of the Council of Ministers of France, Georges Clemenceau, it was moved to the Louvre.

For forty years, "Olympia" stayed under the same roof with its prototype - "Venus of Urbino". In 1947, the painting moved to the Museum of Impressionism, and in 1986, Olympia, whose fate began so unhappily, became the pride and decoration of the new Parisian Orsay Museum.

In the main building of the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin exhibition "Olympia" opened - brought to Moscow famous masterpiece impressionist Edouard Manet. “Around the World” talks about the symbols encrypted in this picture.

Painting "Olympia"
Canvas, oil. 130.5 × 190 cm
Year of creation: 1863
Located in the Orsay Museum, Paris

It is so easy to offend the feelings of the public... Nowadays this can be achieved by pulling a poster with Christ on stage or dancing the dance of the bees. And in the 19th century, when no one was surprised by nudity, Edouard Manet painted a naked prostitute - the scandal was to the skies. The author of the sensation himself did not count on this.

In 1865, at the Paris Salon, almost the most major scandal for its entire, at that time almost two-century, history. Armed guards had to be posted in front of one of the paintings to protect the work from the indignant crowd. Outraged visitors tried to spit on the canvas, hit it with a cane or an umbrella. Critics branded the picture for cynicism and debauchery and called for pregnant women and young virgins to be protected from this monstrous spectacle. It would seem that what distinguished the naked girl from Manet’s painting from “Venuses”, “Susannas”, “Bathers” and other nudes that mid-19th centuries were present at every exhibition? But his Olympia was neither a character of myth or ancient history, neither an allegory nor an abstract example female beauty. Judging by the velvet around her neck and shoes, the artist depicted a contemporary woman, and everything, including the title of the painting, clearly indicated the girl’s profession. Olympia was the name of the courtesan, the heroine of the novel and drama by Alexandre Dumas - the son of “The Lady of the Camellias”; this spectacular antique name served as a “creative pseudonym” for many expensive Parisian prostitutes. The girl lying on the prepared bed from Manet’s painting looks directly at the viewer with a frank and slightly cynical look - as if at a client who has just entered, and this angered the respectable (at least in public) metropolitan bourgeoisie.

At the exhibition, the ill-fated work was hung in the back room almost to the ceiling so that no one could damage it. Recognition, as often happens, came to the masterpiece after the artist’s death.

1. Pose of the heroine and composition of the painting- a direct reference to “Venus of Urbino” by Titian Vecellio. "Olympia"- a kind of modernized version of the Renaissance masterpiece - seems to parody it in many details.

2. Model. A representative of Parisian bohemia, model Victorine Meurand, nicknamed Shrimp for her miniature size, served as a model not only for Olympia, but also for many others female images from paintings by Manet. Subsequently, she herself tried to become an artist, but did not succeed. Art critic Phyllis Floyd believes that one of the prototypes of Olympia was the most talked about courtesan of those years - Marguerite Bellanger, the mistress of Emperor Napoleon III.

3. Mules, or panties. These mules were common house shoes of the time. A removed shoe is an erotic symbol, a sign of lost innocence.

4. Bracelet and earrings. They repeat the decorations of Venus from Titian's painting, emphasizing the connection between the two paintings.

5. Flower. Olympia's hair is decorated with an aphrodisiac - an orchid.

6. Pearls. Attribute of Venus, goddess of love.

7. Cat. Symbol of female sexual promiscuity. In Manet’s painting it is in the same place where in Titian’s canvas the dog is a symbol of marital fidelity (“Venus of Urbino” is dedicated to the joys of marriage, originally intended to decorate the bride’s dowry chest).

8. Bouquet. A traditional offering to courtesans from their clients.

9. Maid. While in Titian’s painting the confidantes of Venus the bride are putting her dowry into chests, in Manet the maid brings the mistress a kind of “deposit” from the client. Some high-end prostitutes in 19th-century Paris kept dark-skinned servants whose appearance evoked the exotic pleasures of oriental harems.

Edouard Manet. Olympia. 1863, Paris.

“Olympia” by Edouard Manet is one of the most famous works artist. Now almost no one argues that this is a masterpiece. But 150 years ago it created an unimaginable scandal.

Visitors to the exhibition literally spat at the painting! Critics warned pregnant women and the faint of heart not to view the film. For they risked experiencing extreme shock from what they saw.

It would seem that nothing foreshadowed such a reaction. After all, Manet was inspired by the classic work for this work. Titian, in turn, was inspired by the work of his teacher Giorgione, “Sleeping Venus.”

In the middle: Titian.. 1538 Uffizi Gallery, Florence. At the bottom: Giorgione. Venus is sleeping. 1510 Old Masters Gallery, Dresden.

Nudes in painting

Both before Manet and during Manet’s time, there were plenty of naked bodies on canvases. Moreover, these works were received with great enthusiasm.

“Olympia” was shown to the public in 1865 at the Paris Salon (the main exhibition France). And 2 years before that, Alexander Cabanel’s painting “The Birth of Venus” was exhibited there.

Cabanel's work was received with delight by the public. The beautiful naked body of a goddess with a languid gaze and flowing hair on a 2-meter canvas leaves few people indifferent. The painting was bought by Emperor Napoleon III on the same day.

Why did Manet's Olympia and Cabanel's Venus produce such different reactions from the public?

Manet lived and worked in the era of Puritan morals. Admire the naked female body it was extremely indecent. However, this was allowed if the woman depicted was as unreal as possible.

That's why artists loved to depict mythical women, such as the goddess Venus of Cabanel. Or eastern women, mysterious and unattainable, such as Odalisque Ingres.

3 extra vertebrae and a dislocated leg for greater beauty

It is obvious that the models who posed for both Cabanel and Ingres in reality had more modest external data. The artists openly embellished them.

At least this is obvious with Ingres's Odalisque. The artist added 3 to his heroine extra vertebrae to lengthen your waist and make the arch of your back more impressive. The Odalisque's arm is also unnaturally extended to harmonize with the elongated back. In addition, left leg unnaturally twisted. In reality, it cannot lie at such an angle. Despite this, the image turned out to be harmonious, although very unrealistic.

Too frank realism of Olympia

Manet went against all the rules described above. His Olympia is too realistic. Before Manet, perhaps, he only wrote like this. He depicted his own, although pleasant in appearance, but clearly not a goddess.

Maha is a representative of one of the lowest classes in Spain. She, like Olympia Manet, looks at the viewer confidently and a little defiantly.

Manet also depicted an earthly woman instead of a beautiful mythical goddess. Moreover, a prostitute who looks directly at the viewer appraisingly and confidently. Olympia's black maid holds a bouquet of flowers from one of her clients. This further emphasizes what our heroine does for a living.

The appearance of the model, called ugly by contemporaries, is in fact simply not embellished. This is the appearance of a real woman with her own shortcomings: the waist is barely visible, the legs are short without the seductive slope of the hips. The protruding belly is in no way hidden by the thin thighs.

It is realism social status and Olympia’s appearance outraged the public so much.

Another courtesan Manet

Manet has always been a pioneer, just as he was in his time. He tried to find his own path in creativity. He strove to take the best from the work of other masters, but never imitated, but created his own, authentic. “Olympia” – bright that example.

Manet subsequently remained true to his principles, striving to depict modern life. So, in 1877 he painted the painting “Nana”. Written in . In it, a woman of easy virtue powders her nose in front of her waiting client.

« Olympia" - a world masterpiece paintings of the 19th century century. The picture was painted by the great French artist(1832-1883) in 1863. Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 190 cm. The painting is currently in the Orsay Museum in Paris.

Job famous impressionist caused a great scandal among art critics and spectators after it was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1865. Many did not like both the plot itself and Manet’s writing style, in which he abandoned the drawing and elaboration of colors and details, as well as the depth of the composition. Mane was accused of immorality. Moreover, during the exhibition there were more than once attempts on her life. Crowds of people came just to laugh at the picture. The administration, in order to preserve the painting, placed two guards near the painting, who could hardly defend “Olympia”, otherwise it would have simply been torn into pieces and trampled on.

The painting depicts a naked woman. The model for Olympia was Manet’s favorite model, Victorine Meurand (1844-1927), who also posed for such paintings by Edouard Manet as: “Street Singer”, “Mademoiselle Quiz in the Costume of a Matador”, “Breakfast on the Grass”, “Woman with a Parrot” " And " Railway" In addition to Olympia, the painting contains a dark-skinned maid with a bouquet and a black kitten.

In his painting, Manet does not pay much attention to the spatial plan and volume. This makes the work appear a bit flat, consisting of a foreground with figures and a flat interior in the background. A yellow vertical stripe on the wall divides the painting into two parts, one containing Olympia with a brown wall background, and the other containing a maid and a kitten with green curtains as a background. The flat composition, lack of multi-layering, as well as deliberate carelessness of writing are a harbinger of the emergence of a new style - impressionism.

Art critics note that the painting by Edouard Manet is similar to some other paintings by different authors of the past, in which there is a reclining nude woman, for example: “Sleeping Venus” by Giorgione, “Venus of Urbino” by Titian, “Maja Nude” by Francisco Goya and others. The poses of the lying women in these paintings are almost the same. Particular similarities are found with Titian’s painting “Venus of Urbino”. Both Venus and Olympia are in very similar poses, including the position of their arms and legs. Moreover, in Titian’s painting there is also a clear division into two honors using vertical line, which separates the main object in the picture from the secondary plot. Moreover, both women have a bracelet on their right hand, and there is a pet at their feet (in Titian’s painting there is a dog).

Such copying of a painting is not at all the “stealing” of Titian’s idea. Using the example of this painting, as well as the example of the painting “,” the basis of which was also taken from the work of a Renaissance artist (Marcantonio Raimondi), we can see the innovative artist’s rethinking of the ideals of beauty of painting of the past on new way. Edouard Manet brings masterpieces of the Renaissance to reality modern life, thereby making the motive of the picture more understandable and closer to modern man. Despite the plot, which is similar to a mythological one, the viewer can immediately notice that in front of him is an ordinary modern girl.

Name main character The painting "Olympia" in Manet's time was associated with a girl of easy virtue because of Alexandre Dumas's novel "The Lady of the Camellias". This is also evidenced by various symbols in the painting: a black maid who brought a bouquet of flowers from a suitor; an aphrodisiac in the form of an orchid flower in the hair; pearl jewelry worn by the goddess of love Venus; a black kitten is a symbol of a witch and vice.

The painting made such a great impression on other artists that Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Gerhard Richter, Larry Rivers and many others wrote their “Olympias” based on Manet’s painting.