Khalil Bey and L’Origine du Monde

Mavi Boncuk | 

The depiction of a naked female torso scandalised and shocked Paris when Gustave Courbet painted it in 1866. However, Courbet omitted the head, which has left critics to puzzle over the identity of the model who sat for L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World). 

The painting caused such uproar that the artist was forced to sell it on the black market and the model’s identity remained secret. Now Claude Schopp, a historian, has come across the answer. He discovered that the woman who posed for Courbet was Constance Quéniaux, a ballet dancer at Paris Opera and later the mistress of Halil Serif Pasha, an Ottoman diplomat known as Khalil Bey. Bey commissioned L’Origine du Monde. 

Mr Schopp made the discovery while studying historic correspondence. 

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