We can imagine the young Manet wandering through the enormous museum, poised in front of some of the world's greatest masterpieces, the beckoning voices of the enlightened artists drowning out the authoritative paternal voice, encouraging him to break through the dark barrier of the past and into the light of the future.
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| Tintoretto self-portrait (1588) Louvre |
Setting the exhibition inside the Palazzo Ducale in Venice reunites Manet with the Venetian masters who reached out to him in Paris from beyond the grave. After living amongst the ancient masters in the Louvre, the 21-year-old Manet first came to Italy in 1853 and stayed in Venice, then Florence, and perhaps, went onto Rome and experienced firsthand the environment in which they worked. He next visited Germany and Austria, and then returned to Paris, where he copied the old masters. He again visited Italy in 1857.
Manet. Return to Venice focuses, naturally, on the relationship the painter had with Italy in general and Venice in particular. The oils Manet made of the Venus du Pardo after Titian, and the Self-portrait after Tintoretto, are part of the exhibition (the originals are not; I am including them here for illustration purposes), as are drawings of works by Veronese, Raphael, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolomeo, Parmigianino, Luca della Robbia, Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio and Benozzo Gozzoli.
It seems remarkable that a 22-year-old could have the depth of character to produce such exceptional copies of the worldly self-portrait that Tintoretto painted as a man of 70, or the lascivious scene of Jupiter cavorting with Antiope that Titian painted when he was around 50, but when you visit the exhibition, you will witness the phenomenon with your own eyes.
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| Self-portrait by Edouard Manet (after Tintoretto) (1854) Musée des Beaux-Art, Dijon |
True to rebellious form, Manet fell in love with an unsuitable woman, the Dutch-born pianist, Suzanne Leenhoff, who was hired in late 1849 by Auguste, Manet's father, to teach piano to Edouard and his two younger brothers. In 1850, Edouard and Suzanne became lovers, keeping the relationship secret, especially from Auguste.
On January 29, 1852, six days after Edouard's 20th birthday, Suzanne gave birth to a son, which she named Lèon-Edouard Koella, "probably" Edouard's son -- all this, remember, taking place prior to Manet's visit to Venice. (He began living with Suzanne and Lèon in 1860, but it wasn't until after his upstanding father, Auguste, died of syphilis in 1862 that Manet married Suzanne on October 28, 1863.)
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| Pardo Venus by Titian (1540-42) Louvre |
Manet. Return to Venice is divided into nine sections:
- MANET'S ITALYS
- THE FATES OF VENUS
- NORTH/SOUTH (STILL LIFE)
- SOLITUDE OF JESUS
- A VERY HYBRID SPAIN
- BETWEEN MUSIC AND THEATRE
- CONTEMPORARY PARNASSUS
- MANET SOCIETY PAINTER
- THE BOUNDLESS SEA.
Manet arrived in Venice in September, 1853, and the exhibit opens with what was going on in Venice at that point in time. Back in France, the next year he produced the copies of Tintoretto and the Titian, obviously inspired by the painters.
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| Pardo Venus by Manet (after Titian) (1854) Musée Marmottan, Paris |
Also in the first section is the controversial Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (see top), which was inspired by Pastoral Concert, a work attributed to the Venetian artists Titian or Giorgione, and, perhaps, by Giorgione's The Tempest.
The jury at the Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, had rejected Luncheon on the Grass in 1863, so Manet exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés
(Exhibition of the Refused), the exhibition that Emperor Napoleone III had decreed be
established to handle the immense output of art being created and
rejected by the Salon at the time.
When the critics eyed the naked woman lounging with men who were fully dressed in Luncheon on the Grass, their response was savage. The painting created a
huge scandal, causing Manet's good friend, the writer, Emile Zola, to
jump to his defense:
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| Pastoral Concert by Titian or Giorgione (1509) Louvre, Paris |
"The Luncheon on the Grass is the greatest work of Édouard Manet,
one in which he realizes the dream of all painters: to place figures of
natural grandeur in a landscape. We know the power with which he
vanquished this difficulty.There are some leaves, some tree trunks,
and, in the background, a river in which a chemise-wearing woman bathes;
in the foreground, two young men are seated across from a second woman
who has just exited the water and who dries her naked skin in the open
air.
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| Emile Zola (1868) Musée d'Orsay |
This nude woman has scandalized the public, who see only her in the
canvas. My God! What indecency: a woman without the slightest covering
between two clothed men! That has never been seen.
And this belief is a
gross error, for in the Louvre
there are more than fifty paintings in which are found mixes of persons
clothed and nude.
But no one goes to the Louvre to be scandalized. The
crowd has kept itself moreover from judging The Luncheon on the Grass
like a veritable work of art should be judged; they see in it only some
people who are having a picnic, finishing bathing, and they believed
that the artist had placed an obscene intent in the disposition of the
subject, while the artist had simply sought to obtain vibrant
oppositions and a straightforward audience...."
The second sec
tion of the exhibition, THE FATES OF VENUS i
s sensational: Manet's controversial painting OLYMPIA (1863) which was condemned as "immoral" and "vulgar" has traveled out of France for the first time to pose dramatically next to source of her inspiration, Titian's VENUS OF URBINO (1538), which, in 1880, Mark Twain called "the foulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses" -- it seems he did not know OLYMPIA was on the horizon.
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| Venus of Urbino by Titan (1538) Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence |
An interesting choice on the part of the curators was to hang the striking 1860 portrait that Manet painted of his parents (see above) on the wall directly across the room from the two paintings. Also, the well-researched timeline provides valuable insight as to what was going on in history, as well as in art, culture and science throughout the major events in Manet's life.
Thus, we are reminded that these were turbulent times in both Europe and the United States, with Italy struggling to form a Kingdom, and the US starting the Civil War to abolish slavery, just about the time that Charles Darwin published the Origin of the Species, Victor Hugo published Les Miserables, and Richard Wagner was in Paris with a new production of Tannhauser in French. Perhaps all this uproar is what inspired Cezanne to quit his bank job and become a painter in 1862.
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| Olympia by Edouard Manet (1863) Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
Then, in May 1865, the Salon did exhibit Olympia, along with Jesus Mocked by the Soldiers which caused all sorts of renewed outrage directed at Manet. This kind of behavior continued throughout Manet's life. In 1886 he painted The Fifer which he intended to win the Salon public of 1886, but the work was not even accepted.
Let's take the time to read an excerpt from the Wikipedia article about Impressionism that sums up the situation. All three paintings I have used to illustrate the article are by Manet. All are here in Venice for the exhibition. And all are from the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, but are not part of the Wikipedia article:
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| Berthe Morisot with Violets (1874) |
In 1863, the jury rejected Manet's The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe)
primarily because it depicted a nude woman with two clothed men at a
picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and
allegorical paintings, they condemned Manet for placing a realistic nude
in a contemporary setting.[3]
The jury's severely worded rejection of Manet's painting appalled his
admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year
perturbed many French artists.
After Emperor Napoleon III saw the rejected works of 1863, he decreed
that the public be allowed to judge the work themselves, and the Salon des Refusés
(Salon of the Refused) was organized. While many viewers came only to
laugh, the Salon des Refusés drew attention to the existence of a new
tendency in art and attracted more visitors than the regular Salon."
Although Manet was invited to exhibit his work at the first Impressionist show in 1874, he declined, and never did actually do a show with the younger artists he helped to inspire. In October, 1874, he traveled again to Venice with his wife, Suzanne, this time as a famous, successful artist.
My favorite room was VII. CONTEMPORARY PARNASSUS
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| Portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé by Manet (1876) Musée d?Orsay, Paris |
Parnassus was the home of the Muses, the home of music, poetry and learning. Manet was not only friends with other artists, he put himself in contact with all the writers and poets of his time such as Baudelaire, Zola and Stéphane Mallarmé, with whom he transformed the American writer Edgar Allen Poe's poem The Raven into an illustrated masterpiece translated into French, known because Mallarmé taught English.
These enlightened thinkers painted, wrote and created music inspired by each other, often using their friends and family members as the subjects of their works. Therefore, no matter how often the establishment heaped criticism upon them, or tried to destroy them, they backed each other up, and left behind a brilliant record of their accomplishments that reaches us today.
Ironically, Edouard Manet died of syphilis like his father on April 30, 1883.
Our fathers laughed at Courbet
and now we fall into ecstasy before his paintings;
we laugh at Manet
and it will be our children who go into raptures before his pictures.
---Emile Zola
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Where: Palazzo Ducale – San Marco 1 , 30124 Venice
When: April 24th 2013 / August 18th 2013
EXTENDED! TO SEPTEMBER 1, 2013
Opening hours: from Sunday to Thursday, from 9.00 am
to 7.00 pm
Friday and Saturday, from 9.00 am to 8.00 pm
(ticket
office closes 1 hour before)
Co-produced with
24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE
With the special collaboration of the
Musée D’Orsay in Paris
With the patronate of the
Soprintendenza ai Beni Architettonici e Paesaggistici di Venezia e Laguna
Regione del Veneto
Commissaries Guy Cogeval and Gabriella Belli
Curated by Stéphan Guégan
Layout by Daniela Ferretti
The catalogue will be published by Skira-Milan with texts by: Roberto
Calasso, Guy Cogeval, Stéphane Guégan, Gabriella Belli, Flavio Fergonzi
and Cesare De Seta.
