sheen of the linen, on close inspection, offers a range of colors from the pale violet that defines the creases in the top pillow to the pale yellows and gold that reflect light from the sheet below the horizontal tuck. The smooth flesh of Olympia herself employs more fully blended colors as the volumes of her body are created by subtle gradations in tone rather than by sharp folds and tucks like the cloth.
The repetition of colors throughout the painting is very carefully planned. The scattered decorations on the dressing gown are roughly the same colors as the flowers in the bouquet, and they too, like the real flowers, are surrounded by an expanse of white. And, on a much larger scale, the pale Olympia, surrounded by green at the top and white at the bottom, bears a relationship to her surroundings that is similar to that of the large white flower in the bouquet and the leaves and flowers that surround it. The equation of the carefully displayed Olympia against her white pillow and the flowers displayed against their white paper rectangle is, just as plainly, a reiteration of the dominant form of Olympia from, roughly, her left hand to her head.
This reiteration of the shape of the displayed object against the white rectangle is an important compositional device. The basic form of Manet's composition is that of two upward-pointing triangles, with the heads of Olympia and the maid at their summits, and a third, inverted and smaller, triangle that ends a
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