At the 1865 Paris Salon, armed guards were posted to stop furious art lovers from puncturing a canvas with umbrellas and walking sticks. The painting was Olympia, and this episode explores how Édouard Manet, born into Parisian high society in 1832, became the reluctant father of modern art. We follow his failed naval examinations, his training under the traditional painter Thomas Couture, the influence of Velázquez and Goya, and the hostile reception of Music in the Tuileries in 1862.

We break down why his visible brushstrokes offended critics trained on glazing, why the Salon des Refusés was created in 1863, and why Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia shocked viewers by taking classical poses from Titian and Raphael and stripping away the mythological safety net. We then turn to his private contradictions: his marriage to Suzanne Leenhoff an ...