What is Olympia (Manet)?
{{italictitle}} {{Infobox Painting | image_file=Manet, Edouard - Olympia, 1863.jpg | image_size=340px | title=Olympia | artist=[[Édouard Manet]] | year=1863 | medium=[[Oil painting|Oil on canvas]] | height_metric=130.5 | width_metric=190 | height_imperial=51.4 | width_imperial = 74.8 | metric_unit=cm | imperial_unit=in | city=[[Paris]] | museum=[[Musée d'Orsay]] }} '''''Olympia''''' is an 1863 [[oil painting]] by [[Édouard Manet]]. When it was first exhibited in 1865, the subject of the painting was controversial. ==History== Manet reworked [[Giorgione]]'s ''The Sleeping Venus'' (c. 1510) and [[Titian]]'s ''Venus of Urbino'' (c. 1538) in creating ''Olympia''.<ref>{{citation |last=Harris |first=Nathaniel |year=1979 |title=A treasury of impressionism |publisher=Crescent |page=42}}</ref> ''Olympia'' may also take inspiration from [[Francisco Goya]]'s ''La maja desnuda'' (c. 1800).<ref>Meyers, Jeffrey. (2004). ''Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt,'' p. 35; Beruete y Moret, Aureliano. (1922). [https://books.google.com/books?id=3unqAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA190&dq= ''Goya as portrait painter,'' p. 190].</ref> This is uncertain however. Victorine Meurent was Manet's model for ''Olympia''.<ref>{{citation |last=Lipton |first=Eunice |year=1999 |title=Alias Olympia: a woman's search for Manet's notorious model & her own desire |place=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=0-8014-8609-2}} pp. 5{{ndash}}6</ref> She posed as a bullfighter for him and also for the ''[[Dejeuner sur l'Herbe]]'' of 1862-63.<ref>Harris, pp. 39, 43</ref> Manet painted ''Olympia'' in the autumn of 1863. The work was first seen by the public at the 1865 Salon in Paris. Manet delayed showing the painting because he feared it might produce some negative reactions.<ref name=O16>{{citation |last=Orienti |first=Sandra |year=1968 |title=Manet |publisher=Grosset & Dunlap |pages=14–16}}</ref> ==Reaction== ''Olympia'' did produce negative reactions: people hated it. Some people thought the painting was immor