Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (“Luncheon on the Grass”) — Édouard Manet, 1863

The painting was incredibly notorious in its time for its depiction of a casually nude woman sitting with clothed men. Idealised nudes were fine in mythology, but a present-day naked lady with realistic belly rolls, coolly looking back at the artist? That was not okay!

Funny thing: like his later and equally notorious Olympia, Manet drew clear inspiration from Renaissance masterpieces, though cheekily tweaked—not the first or the last to remix previous works in this manner.