Actuality and intertextuality in the painting of Edouard Manet

In this article, the painting of Edouard Manet is traditionally considered as a new set of pictorial means representing actual life and the perspective of the development of contemporary art; and as a dialogue with the art of old masters, in which there is a destruction of the classical type of mimesis and the birth of picture’s new status. But here, the emphasis is different: the novelty and significance of his painting are predetermined not by changing social environment directly, they are born of a new visual discourse of Manet’s time, responding to the challenge presented by a new stage in the development of art, and its new role in stratification of culture.