Muse de Orsay: An Unleashed platform

The Birth of Venus (French: Naissance de Venus)

is a painting by the French artist Alexandre Cabanel. It was painted in 1863 and is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

At the Salon of 1863, The Birth of Venus was one of a multitude of female nudes. Bathed in opalescent colors, the goddess Venus shyly looks to the viewer from beneath the crook of her elbow. Two years later, Manet presented his now renowned painting Olympia at the Salon as well. Today both hang in the Musee de’ Orsay.

Unlike Venus’s ethereal-like palette, Manet painted Olympia with pale, placid skin tone, and darkly outlined the figure. Her only seemingly modest gesture is the placement of her hand over her leg, though it is not out of shyness- one must pay before they can see.

James Rubin writes of the two works: “The Olympia is often compared to Cabanel’s Birth of Venus, for the latter is a far more sexually appealing work, despite its mythological guise… It is evident Manet’s demythologizing of the female nude was foremost a timely reminder of modern realities.

The majority of critics attacked the painting with unmitigated disgust…: “What is this odalisque with the yellow belly, ignoble model dredged up from who knows where?” [And] “The painter’s attitude is of inconceivable vulgarity

The enormous Studio is, without doubt, Courbet’s most mysterious composition.

However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted”, he declared, “on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers.

On the left is the other world of everyday life, the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who make a living from death”.

In the first group, those on the right, we can recognize the bearded profile of the art collector Alfred Bruyas, and behind him, facing us, the philosopher Proudhon.

The critic Champfleury is seated on a stool, while Baudelaire is absorbed in a book. The couple in the foreground personifies art lovers, and near the window, two lovers represent free love.

On the side of “everyday life”, we find a priest, a merchant, a hunter who somewhat resembles Napoleon III, and even an unemployed worker and a beggar girl symbolizing poverty.

We can also see the guitar, the dagger and the hat, which, together with the male model, condemn traditional academic art.

In this vast allegory, truly a manifesto painting, each figure has a different meaning. And in the middle of all this stands Courbet himself, flanked by benevolent figures: a female muse, naked like the Truth, a child, and a cat.

In the center, the painter presents himself as a mediator. Courbet thus affirms the artist’s role in society in an enormous scene on the scale of a history painting. When faced with the rejection of his painting, intended for the 1855 Universal Exhibition, Courbet built a “Pavilion of Realism” at his own expense.

Here, outside the official event, he organized his own exhibition, which also includes Burial at Ornans, so that his work could be available to the whole of society.

Picasso in blue and pink at the Musée d’Orsay