In the second half of the 19th century, one often encounters prostitutes in the art of the time as a main theme. However, the portrayal was typically from a stereotypical perspective.<br><br>Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh exhibited paintings of cabarets and cafes depicting the entertainment of the lower classes and the petite bourgeoisie. They represented dancers and cocottes as a part of this atmosphere, which is seen as a way of escape from the cruel realities of being a worker.<br><br>Against this backdrop, Manet had kept his masterpiece "Olympia" from the public for almost two years before exhibiting it at the Salon in 1865.<br><br>In the painting a prostitute looks at the audience with unprecedented confidence and confrontation. The negative reaction to this painting was, on the one hand, due to the artist's "indecisiveness" in painting a figure in which the concepts of a naked woman and a prostitute were confused, and, on the other, with the intricate and ongoing debate on the aesthetic criteria in the period of Second Empire France.<br><br>Although the prototype was the old-fashion type of Aphrodite, here the woman has a character: she is not passive, rather she is part of the life whose existence the bourgeoisie refused to accept. At the same time she is so seductive that she magnetises the eye. Although the woman is still presented as a prostitute, she is depicted not simply as an object of desire, but also as the embodiment of social change.<br>