The Horror of Life and the Ecstasy of Life: Édouard Manet’s Preoccupation with Religion, Death and Mortality

This thesis addresses for the first time the impact of religious experience on the art of one of the nineteenth century’s major French painters Édouard Manet (1832-1883). Catholicism places considerable emphasis on mortality and the veneration of saints, which the young Manet encountered head-on in the guise of a wax catacomb saint at his first school. Viewing such realistic and gruesome Christian imagery at close quarters on numerous occasions led to a profound awareness of his own mortality. Most scholars thus far have glossed over the importance of religion in the lives of avant-garde artists but, growing up as a member of the haute bourgeoisie in nineteenth-century Paris, Manet was steeped in Catholicism. His society, his immediate family and his wide circle of friends and associates, most importantly Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), reinforced this Catholic outlook. Manet and Baudelaire shared the view that while life could be wonderful it could also be horrific. Close analysis of Manet’s work shows that, far from being a secular artist, religious iconography plays a significant part in his oeuvre. He was deeply affected by regular exposure to a wax recumbent relic; by discovering the hanged body of his assistant in his studio; and by thoughts of the Passion of Christ. Christ on the Cross was a symbol of suffering in general and specifically of Manet’s own torment as a struggling artist.