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Venus Of Urbino

Decent Essays

Manet broke social norms as well as, formal rules, composition rules, and rules of subject. Seeing a modern woman whom has intentionally discarded her clothes was absurd in this era. Manet made the woman vivid and flat to gravitate attention towards her as much as possible. He also broke rules of naturalism, by the disjunction and collapsing of space as stated in the video. Manet is intentionally playing with art and making a statement, by not applying the basic rules such as colors meshing, space between figures…etc. He borrowed his composition from a print by Raffaello Sanzio, a painter and architect of the High Renaissance. Manet took the concept of landscape, and subject matter of clothed men and nude women from Giorgio Castelfranco, a …show more content…

Manet wanted to take away the mythological aspect to the piece as well as the grave detail to the piece itself. Manet is basically trying to play with the old aspects of Acidemic Art, and use it as a tool to slowly introduce a more Modern Art. Understanding Manets style, we can see his talents are superb and he is one who likes to challenge for the fun of it. Looking at his piece, we can see Olympias facial features are not perfect, as opposed to Venus. Olympia is looking directly at her viewer(s), showing that she is confronting us as we look at her. Venus is known to look away in her pieces, giving a more harmonic and sensual aspect. The viewers of Venus do not have any discourage from not looking, because the piece is intentionally signaling the viewers to look, by having Venus look away. This also gives viewers a “reason” to admire the piece… quote on quote because it’s clearly a naked woman to check out. Manet is challenging that idea, and trying to give his audience less justification as to why they are looking at that piece. As opposed to Venus, Olympia is a prostitute rather than a mythological goddess. Manet is confronting the 19th century for its corruptness. Rather than detailing Olympias breasts and abdomen like average artists, he only detailed hands and feet which was upsetting to the press. Manet also intentionally unmasks his paint, for the viewer to know it’s a painting, not a complete illusion like other art. He uses it as a reminder, to know why we are looking at the piece and what the piece really consists

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