Edouard Manet - Olympia Notebook

Olympia, painted by Édouard Manet in 1863 in oil on canvas and exhibited at the Salon of 1865, reimagines Titian’s Venus of Urbino as a stark contemporary scene. Victorine Meurent reclines on a bed and meets the viewer’s gaze directly, while a Black maid presents a bouquet of flowers and a black cat arches its tail at the foot of the bed. Manet’s flat, harsh lighting and matter-of-fact realism reject the softened idealism of academic tradition. By recasting the traditional reclining Venus as a contemporary Parisian courtesan, he provoked a major scandal at the 1865 Salon and turned the conventions of the old masters into a confrontation with modern life.