Alias Olympia: A Woman's Search for Manet's Notorious Model and Her Own Desire, by Eunice Lipton (TPB, 1994, $1.75)
Lipton's book is really a quest to find out who the model, Victorine Meurent, was in her own right. As a model Meurent was unique. Manet said to her, "You never look at the world as if you need anything from it." He painted her nine times, but it his 1865 portrayal of her as Olympia that caused most of the fuss. The press hated the painting, and described her as "a gorilla", indecent,and grotesque. The public also hated both painting and model. They made their feelings known, which caused the Salon's directors to cordon off the painting, and Manet to flee to Spain, still wondering what he had done to spark such anger.
Why such anger? Was it Meurent's "unmanageability- the steadiness of her gaze, her traveling, her painting, her lesbianism" that inspired the vitriol that would always follow her, that would report her death decades before she really died and would omit recording her later success as a painter. She was truly a women born before her time. Read about her here, as Lipton excavates both her own and Meurent's past. Look for this book in the biography section.
