Reversing the Gaze - Manet’s "Olympia" and Titian’s "The Venus of Urbino"

by Anna Niederlander

Eduard Manet, Olympia, 1868, Musee D’Orsay, Paris.

Why did Édouard Manet’s Olympia cause an outrage in 1865 when very similar looking Titian’s The Venus of Urbino was praised in 1538?

Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) was shown in the Salon 327 years before Manet’s Olympia (1863), where it was celebrated for its skilled depiction of the innocent goddess-like figure. Manet’s Olympia, was almost a mockery of Titians work and resulted in outrage, as critics deemed it ‘an unfinished, slapdash result,’ and the Parisian public regarded it scandalous and outrageous. Titian created his Venus of Urbino in the middle of his career, by which time he was already known for his meticulous, small brushstrokes. Most of his works were commissioned by wealthy aristocrats and clergymen. Manet’s career spanned from 1855 to 1881, during the start of the impressionist movement. It was a movement that altered many previous art practices, and introduced the idea of painting en plein air, whereby artists created works outside, painting what they saw. This had a great effect on his technique for this work. Manet was also born into a relatively well-to-do family, awarding him the privilege of being able to paint without the need for a patron or sponsorship. ‘”I have only one ambition,” he exclaimed, “not to stay equal to myself, not to do the same thing day after day. I want to keep on seeing things from new angles. I want to try to make people hear a new note.”’  

In Olympia, Manet’s technique signified a radical departure from the norm. In line with the Impressionists, he did not work from preparatory sketches, and ‘hurled himself on his bare canvas in a rush, as if he had never painted before.’ This presents a stark contrast to Titian, whose preparatory study for Venus of Urbino was extensive. Unlike Titian, Manet painted Olympia using larger and less refined brushstrokes, which added a somewhat crude element to his work, and yet seemed fitting for the harsh subject and story depicted. Their difference in technique can be clearly seen in the pillow, where Manet’s brushstrokes look textured and irregular compared to Titian’s imperceptible ones. Manet eliminated half tones and used an extensive tenebrism to highlight Olympia’s pale nakedness against the dark background. Titian, in turn, included two further figures in the scene, namely two women dressed in white garments, that makes the contrast to the nude less extreme. This is a difference worth noting, as there are more dressed figures in the scene than there are nude. 

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538, Uffizi, Florence.

Furthermore, the size of Olympia is 130.5 cm x 190cm, while that of the Venus of Urbino is only 119cm x 165cm. This allows Manet’s work to be more dominant in the room, thus making Olympia’s nudity more intrusive. Manet’s use of line is strategic in that ‘everything in the painting leads our eye to gaze on her nakedness.’ The line of the red curtain behind Olympia leads the viewer’s eye toward her groin. Her left hand is also flexed in an almost protective way compared to those of Venus in Venus of Urbino, whose fingers are curved and relaxed. Compared to Titian’s Venus, Manet’s Olympia rests awkwardly. In Titian’s work, the female nude lounges comfortably, her body positioned to emphasise elegance and ideal beauty. Moreover, the apex of the cushion in Titian’s work points away from the nude, thus creating a line which leads the eye away from the nude body. The open room and window in the background of Titian’s scene create further depth, emphasising a spatial dimension and allowing the viewer’s eye to roam. The opposite is true of Manet’s Olympia, in which the blacked-out background not only puts all the focus on Olympia, but makes it impossible to escape her gaze. Manet does this strategically, as the viewer comes to feel trapped in this room, and is given no option but to reflect on the action taking place. The confrontation is unrelenting. 

Understanding the subject matter represented in both works is crucial to understanding the reaction they elicited from the public. Manet’s Olympia, rather than a religious or mythological figure, is a representation of a common prostitute, and is thus very different from Titian’s Venus of Urbino. “Olympia had “the little hard body, the short legs, the sturdy trunk, the broad face… those of a woman of the people.” The presence of the African woman in Manet’s background serves as another sexual innuendo, as African women at the time were largely hyper-sexualised because of their appearance, and were problematically deemed ‘exotic’ by artists and critics alike. This stands in contrast to the two figures included in Titian’s background, who are often taken to be chambermaids. Another difference is that the African woman looks directly at the nude Olympia, further emphasising her nakedness through her gaze. Manet seems almost purposefully to ridicule Titians work, using a similar idea, while radically changing the symbols. The dog at the end of the bed, often read as a symbol of fidelity, is replaced by a black cat in Manet’s version, an animal possibly symbolising prostitution. Based on this iconography, it is highly likely that the French public would have immediately recognised Olympia as a prostitute. The flowers seen in the woman’s hands further imply the presence of a client, who has just gifted her the bouquet. It is at this point that Manet seems to introduce a controversial question: who is the client? Is it the customer who is invisible, but who’s presence is implied? Or, more uncomfortably, is it the viewer, who gazes at her nude body and consumes her from beyond the frame? Manet has transported the viewer into an uncomfortable setting. 

What is most striking about Manet’s Olympia is the way in which she stares back at the viewer, returning their gaze. In traditional female nudes, the sitter was usually presented as a passive object for the pleasure of the spectator, a spectator who was presumed to be a male (and likely was male, before women were allowed admittance into Salons). A nude, like a prostitute, is an erotic commodity. Her nakedness is valuable not for its individuality, the marks of one woman’s fleshy embodiment, but for its transcendence of these marks in a formalised language intended to feed male fantasies. In doing so, traditional female nudes erase anything the woman’s potential to be threatening, to subvert the male gaze. Most conventional nudes also presented women as being at a comfortable distance – able to be consumed, but far enough so as to ensure submission. Manet takes away this liberty. Unlike the romantic glance of Titian’s Venus, Olympia stares directly back at the viewer, meeting their eyes confronting. She is not passive. Instead, she is alert and confronts her client, lending her assertive agency and creates a look that is “unmistakably hers.” As art historian T.J Clark points out: “surely, Olympia’s sexual identity is not in doubt… It is how it belongs to her that is the problem.” Olympia destabilises the agency of the male gaze by reverting it. She is no longer a passive object of sexual fetishising, but rather an assertive and powerful woman. 

I, the head, am the only subject

Of this picture. 

You, Sir, are furniture. 

Get stuffed.

       This is the last verse of “Manet’s Olympia”, a poem in which Margaret Atwood accurately represents Olympia not as a passive object, but as a force to be reckoned with, much in the way Manet did. Her final line is an impressive reversal of objectification. It is Olympia who is in control. The gentlemen who gaze stupidly at her nudity are mere furniture. 

Link to the full poem: https://biblioklept.org/2008/05/23/manets-olympia-by-margaret-atwood/

I highly recommend reading it. 

Bibliography: 

Bernheimer, Charles. “Manet’s Olympia: The Figuration of Scandal.” Poetics Today, Vol 10, No 2, Art Literature II (Summer 1989): 155-277. Duke University Press. https://www.jstore.org/stable/1773024.

Clark, T.J. The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, New York: Knopf, 1985

Jones, Jonathan. “Olympia, Edouard Manet (1963)” Accessed October 10, 2019. The Guardian. April 20, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2002/apr/20/art. 

Levine, Steven Z. "Manet's Olympia." Art Journal 52, no. 4 (1993): 87-91. doi:10.2307/777639.

National Gallery of Art. “Manet and his Infleunce.”  Accessed October 10, 2019. https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/manet-and-his-influence.html#slide_6.