Gustave Courbet's 'L'Origine du monde' (1866) is a small 45 × 55 cm oil close-up of a reclining female nude, cropped to the torso and thighs with uncompromising realism. Painted for the Ottoman diplomat-collector Khalil Bey, the picture passed through the private collection of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and entered the Musée d'Orsay in 1995 in lieu of inheritance tax. Repeatedly censored during its life, it now hangs openly in Paris as one of modern painting's most disputed meditations on the representation of the female body.

Exhibition Venue

Musée d'Orsay

Paris, France