Olympia by +douard Manet (1832-83) was painted in 1863 and exhibited at the Salon in 1865, where it caused an immense sensation. The painting, which is oil on canvas, measures 130.5 x 190 cm and currently hangs in the MusTe d'Orsay in Paris. One of the most important paintings of the nineteenth century, the Olympia depicts a young prostitute stretched out on pillows and sheets on a long bed in an elegant room. She wears earrings, a bracelet, a slim choker, one of a pair of high-heeled slippers, and a flower in her hair. A black maid in a pale pink dress stands behind the bed offering a newly-arrived bouquet and a black cat stretches itself at the foot of the bed. But the young woman stares directly out at the viewer. The furor raised by the painting was due to Manet's frank realist approach, which encompassed his unusual method of painting, the nature of the model's profession and, perhaps more than anything, the direct, unabashed quality of her stare.
Despite the great precision of the image there is nothing labored about Manet's approach. The details of the various stretches of cloth, for example, are brought out in intense, quickly painted strokes that convey the sense of volume and texture. The matte quality of the maid's dress, the fringe and embroidery of the dressing-gown and the dull sheen of the green drapes all create the instant impression of being painted in laborious detail. It is only after looking again that the viewer takes in the rapidity of the brushwork and clearly sees that, in most cases, these strokes amount to little more than quick notations indicating, for example, the presence of embroidered flowers on the robe. The most impressive paint-handling is in the sheets and pillows that glow white against the golden tones of the flesh and the dark background. The crisp lace edges of the pillows, for example, are very sketchily indicated but, against so many soft surfaces, they stand out clearly. The ...