Image:
Detail from Manet’s “Olympia” (1863; oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris). When first exhibited in the Salon of 1865, Manet’s image of the nude painter Victorine Meurent, his longtime model, muse, and mistress, provoked anger and popular outrage. Émile Zola reacted differently: “When other artists correct nature by painting Venus they lie. Manet asked himself why he should lie. Why not tell the truth?” See Alexander Nehamas on "The Art of Being Unselfish."