Introduction
Archaeologists have hypothesized that art was originally practiced as a magical means of controlling events such as calling a successful hunt or discovering healing rituals, though there is no definitive proof this was so (Gombrich, 1995). Ancient Egyptian art seems to have been created as a means of commemorating important people. The Greeks created art as an aid to worshipping their gods and goddesses as well as to preserve their cultural myths.
The Romans adopted elements of the Greek style to fuse with elements of the Egyptian style and developed an artistic approach all their own intended to inspire and celebrate their cultural achievements. The art of the Middle Ages was dominated by themes of Christian religious myths as a means of rejecting the Paganism of the fallen Roman Empire giving it both religious, political, and educational purpose while the art of the Renaissance was inspired by the re-discovery of these ancient art forms giving it a historical and experimental purpose (Gombrich, 1995).
Through this skip through history, it is easily understood that art can be used for several purposes and it is often inspired or developed in some way to build on the past. These ideas can be found in a comparison of two similar paintings created more than a century apart such as Titian’s “Venus of Urbino” and Edouard Manet’s “Olympia,” both of which seek to reflect and define their culture’s conception of beauty and expectations of the female gender ideal.
Main body
Titian’s oil on canvas painting “Venus of Urbino” (1538) is a painting of a naked woman lying provocatively on a bed in the foreground while two maids work in the background to dig her clothing out of chests placed along the wall. The woman is stretched out across the front bottom half of the canvas with her near arm was thrown back and over her head and the far arm resting comfortably in such a way that her hand covers her vulva at the center of the image.
She looks directly out of the painting as if daring the viewer to step into her world, but at the same time she seems sweet and almost innocent in her expression. “Titian’s painting is purposefully sensual … She displays none of the attributes of the goddess she is supposed to represent: she is not demure, idealized, unattainable, or remote. This Venus is a flesh-and-blood beauty, awake and fully aware of the viewer’s presence” (Hill, 2006).
Titian makes heavy use of linear perspective and light to suggest that the woman is very available while also providing her with a private, secluded space. “Linear perspective is a mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. The system originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s … To use linear perspective an artist must first imagine the picture surface as an ‘open window’ through which to see the painted world. Straight lines are then drawn on the canvas to represent the horizon and ‘visual rays’ connecting the viewer’s eye to a point in the distance” (Exploring Linear Perspective, 1997).
This technique is used in the decoration of the background to indicate the servant women are in another room as well as to depict the rich quality of the palace the woman is lying in. The suggestion of the lines gives the viewer the sense that they are seeing this woman as if through a window, giving her a degree of separation from the viewer that is only slightly less than the separation from the women in the other room. Lighting is used to emphasize the rich drapery hung just behind the woman, giving her the illusion of privacy from the other women while the vertical line of the drapes forces the vision to the woman’s pubic area.
At the time it was first made public, Edouard Manet’s painting “Olympia” (1863) was greeted with a widespread public scandal not because of the nude state of its central figure, but because of how it depicted the female character. Closely approximating the pose used in Titian’s painting, Manet also duplicated Titian’s practice of working from an earlier example. Unlike Titian’s image, Manet’s Venus wears a gentle pair of heeled sandals, a ribbon tied around her neck, a golden bracelet, and a flower in her hair. Her servant is a black woman so dark that she is nearly lost in the background color although she stands right next to the far side of the bed.
Where the character of Titian’s Venus is only slightly questioned, Manet’s Venus is a prostitute (Bernheimer, 1989). Also like Titian’s character, Manet’s character is successful in that she has a servant and lives within a very rich environment. Beyond this, the representation of the female evident in this painting seems to be completely subject to interpretation. “The public nakedness of a beautiful woman sometimes becomes a question of politics … which actions are permitted under which unspoken and frequently changing rules” (Friedrich, 1992: 1).
Such a blatant illustration of a prostitute communicated to the Victorian culture a very powerful figure in society. The successful prostitute was a woman in control of her destiny as compared to the most powerless women of the age. She was also a direct challenge to the rigid ideals of propriety and purity by suggesting that her type of behavior and character were accepted and even condoned within her society.
There are several ways in which Titian and Manet are similar in their presentations of Venus, but the effects are achieved differently as are the messages conveyed. Both “Venus of Urbino” and “Olympia” depict a nude woman reclining on a bed and attended by servants in much the same configuration of pose and positioning. Both images suggest that the woman depicted is not necessarily as pure and innocent as she might seem largely as a result of her bold, clear look at the individual looking at her.
She is unashamed of her nudity in both images and just barely covers her pubic area with a hand that seems casually placed rather than deliberately directing, although this is the end effect. Both images also represent how artists of one time build upon the ideas of artists of another time as Titian built on the earlier work of another artist making slight changes that gave his Venus a more challenging appeal while Manet made slight changes to Titian’s image to bring forward more blatant references to the woman’s character. However, the images are largely different in the techniques employed to bring forward their ideas.
Titian’s painting relies heavily upon linear perspective and lighting to give the viewer a sense that the woman is at least one degree separated from anyone else around her, whether it is the servants in the background or the viewer on the other side of the frame. Manet’s painting depends much more on tone and symbolism to allow his servant to melt into the background while providing a much more intimate relationship between his female and her viewer.
Conclusion
Although both paintings depict the changing position of women in society using the same ‘copied’ image of an old master, they do so in different ways and with different effects.
Works Cited
Bernheimer, Charles. “Manet’s Olympia: The Figuration of Scandal.” Poetics Today. Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Duke University Press, 1989.
“Exploring Linear Perspective.” The Museum of Science. Science Learning Network, 1997. Web.
Friedrich, Otto. Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
Gombrich, E.H. The Story of Art. London: Phaidon, 1995.
Hill, Suzanne. “Titian’s Venus of Urbino.” Suite101. (2006). Web.