The role played by certain artists in the history of art can seem disproportionate, and disappointment follows. All that fuss about this? From Cubism to Malevich's Suprematist icon, Black Square on a White Background, countless artistic move -ments were born of Cezanne's corpus, but Cezanne himself was once described as a "mediocre painter of apples". Manet is just such an artist. He is not one of the greatest painters, but, like Giorgione and Caravaggio, he marks a turning point in the history of art; with him, one world ended and another began. Degas, the most intelligent painter of Manet's time, understood this, observing, as he left the little cemetery in Passy where Manet had been laid to rest, "He was greater than we thought".
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