A Modern Olympia, Paul Cezanne, 1874.

The idea of the full-frontal nude painting was nothing new when Edouard Manet created his infamous Olympia. Titian, Giorgione, Goya, and Ingres had also painted a naked female, seductively stretched across a casually disheveled bed. So why did the painting received such brash criticism at its 1865 debut at the Paris Salon? Just like many artists of the period, Manet also sought to depict the life of the lower class, yet he took a slightly different route than the pastoral images of Millet, Courbet, and Daumier. Manet seduced his bourgeois and upper class audiences with an image of an attractive female, who simply happened to be a member of the proletariat. The idea of a poorer woman having such mystery and intrigue as Olympia disturbed viewers of the painting, and many were shocked at the prospect of such a woman having an abundance of partners sending her flowers and gifts.

Cezanne hastily created his response to the scandalous Olympia, painting something that gave the critics what they desired in the original by Manet, yet clearly mocking the level at which the painting was criticized. Though Cezanne's A Modern Olympia still portrays a woman sprawled upon an unmade bed, she seems ashamed of her seductive presence, and cowers in the white, cloud-like sheets. The servant, instead of bringing her flowers from one of Olympia's many lovers, tries to cover the poor, naked woman with the bedsheets, hiding her away from the critics to prevent another attack on the illegitimacy of a sultry member of the lower class.

A rich, older man sits on the sofa directly across from Olympia, watching as the servant cloaks the weak woman. Could it be her lover, finished with his work, relaxing on the couch and waiting for his next appointment for the day? Perhaps the man is a critic, happily watching as the low-class courtesan of Manet's Olympia becomes hidden away in the fetal position. The framing of Olympia in Cezanne's version of the painting draws the eye directly to her unclothed, shameful position, and regardless of the backstory of the image, Cezanne proves that the critics and bourgeoisie are still drawn to the mysterious story of the brazen woman originally portrayed in Manet's Olympia.