L'Origine du monde ("The Origin of the World") is a picture painted in oil on canvas by the French painter Gustave Courbet in 1866.

[5] In February 2013, Paris Match reported that Courbet expert Jean-Jacques Fernier had authenticated a painting of a young woman's head and shoulders as the upper section of L'Origine du monde which according to some was severed from the original work.

Fernier has stated that because of the conclusions reached after two years of analysis, the head will be added to the next edition of the Courbet catalogue raisonné.

[8] The claim reported by Paris Match was characterized as dubious by Le Monde art critic Philippe Dagen, indicating differences in style, and that canvas similarities could be caused by buying from the same shop.

[10] According to the historian Claude Schopp and the head of the French National Library's prints department, Sylvie Aubenas, the evidence is found in correspondence between Alexandre Dumas fils and George Sand.

[11] Halil Şerif Pasha (Khalil Bey), an Ottoman diplomat, is believed to have commissioned the work shortly after he moved to Paris.

Edmond de Goncourt hit upon it in an antique shop in 1889, hidden behind a wooden pane decorated with the painting of a castle or a church in a snowy landscape.

Maxime Du Camp, in a harsh tirade, reported his visit to the work's purchaser, and his sight of a painting "giving realism's last word".

Although moral standards and resulting taboos regarding the artistic display of nudity have changed since Courbet, owing especially to photography and cinema, the painting remained provocative.

"[18] The explicitness of the picture may have served as an inspiration, albeit with a satirical twist, for Marcel Duchamp's last major work, Étant donnés (1946–1966), a construction also featuring the image of a woman lying on her back with her legs spread.

In the second piece [2013], Muniz remakes L'Origine from an assemblage of journal clippings that are reminiscent of the anatomic and artistic procedure of cutting that produced [...] the female body.

"[21] Two Origins of the World (2000) by Mexican artist Enrique Chagoya "recycles L'Origine du monde as a spectral backdrop behind three solid black, blue and white squares of canvas in three of the corners of the painting.

[23] The British artist Anish Kapoor created an installation in 2004 called L'Origine du monde, which references Courbet's painting.

The few differences represent the evolution of tastes from the 19th to the 21st centuries: perfectly depilated genitalia with clitoral piercing jewelry and an intimate tattoo of Olga Rodionova, in comparison to the natural hairy look of Constance Quéniaux.

On 23 February 2009 in Braga, Portugal, the police confiscated the book Pornocratie by Catherine Breillat, displayed in bookshops using L'Origine du monde as its cover.

[29][30] On 29 May 2014, a Luxembourg performance artist, Deborah De Robertis, sat on the floor in front of the painting and mimicked the view of the subject.

[36][37] In October 2024, in her book "The Underside of the Origin of the World", Giselle Blanchard shows that the attribution of the painting to Courbet is an axiom, a truth that seems so self-evident that it would be useless to demonstrate it.

[citation needed] In February 2011, Facebook censored L'Origine du monde after it was posted by Copenhagen-based artist Frode Steinicke, to illustrate his comments about a television program aired on DR2.