Manet's Olympia was shown at the Salon of 1865, the most imporlanu artistic event of the year for the Parisian public. The name Olympia was itself enough to make them raise their eyebrows, as the better-class brothels were full of Floras, Aspasias, Lucretias, etc. The public whose gaze met Olympia's level the unblinking eyes of the cat, was astounded. Never has a painting excited so niuch laughter, mockery or catcalls, one critic remarked. Da umier drew a bourgeois family gaping at it in bewilderment (17.10). Less able artists caricatured it. At least 30 critics derided it in the press, complaining loudly o the seemingly brash and slap dash way it was painted as well as of the embarassingly provocative and explicitly modern' subject. Emile Zola, a personal friend of Manet and soon to become famous as a novelist of the seamier side of contemporary city life. answered them by concentrating on the picture's painterly qualities. You wanted a nude, and you chose Olympia, the first that came along, he wrote as if addressing the artisi. You wanted luminous bright patches and you put in a bouquet of flowers. You wanted black patches and you placed a Negress and a cat in the corner. What does it all mean? You hardly know and neither do l This was, of course, disingenuous. Zola must have recognized in the alley-cat, at least, a symbol of sexual proniscuity. lt was true, however, that in this painting Manet was developing a new manner in pictorial representation, experi- nenting with tone, making strong contrasts between related shades at either end of the scale and climinating the softening intermediate range. That is one of the reasons why it made such an impact on young artists, who recognized it as marking a break- through. After Manet's death they were to prevent its exportation to America by subscribing to buy it for the Louvre.