MANET, Edouard
(b. 1832, Paris, d. 1883, Paris)

Olympia (detail)

1863
Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Olympia is today one of the glories of the Musée d'Orsay: an austere nude, devoid of artifice, eloquent and humane in its very plainness. But its forthright realism came as a shock to a public educated on the flirtatious curves of the eighteenth century.