L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World)

From The Mystery Model In Gustave Courbet's Most Scandalous Painting by Jane Alexander.

Visitors to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris often encounter a startling sight. While browsing the section of the gallery devoted to the works of French Realist artist Gustave Courbet, they'll come across an unusually graphic 1886 painting entitled L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World). It's famous for its portrayal of a woman reclining naked, her exposed genitals at the center of the image. While life drawing and painting have long been a part of the history of art, it was unusual at the time to portray a vulva in such an explicit way. 

Courbet’s choice to show the woman's unclothed body without including her head or face was also unconventional. The lack of the latter meant that identifying the model who posed for the painting became an unusually difficult task—and the source of much speculation.

The article is an investigation and the discovery of the subject of the painting.  Interesting in its own right.  And also some clever word play among the contemporary correspondents which led an investigator to the answer to the question of the subject's identity.

I am more struck by the fact that it is hard to not view the painting as blatant pornography but at the same time the truth of the painting's title, L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) is so obvious that it  causes a cognitive dissonance.  If art is meant to jar one's sensibilities, then this must be art.