Claude Schopp describes how he came across new elements enabling him to identify the model in Gustave Courbet’s celebrated painting, L’origine du monde. Weaving himself into the text, he tells us what is known about the dancer and demimondaine who posed for Courbet. In a preface, Sylvie Aubenas, art historian and director of the engravings and photography department at the BNF (National Library of France), backs his theory up, and tells us the story behind the famous painting.

In annotating the abundant correspondence between George Sand and Alexandre Dumas fils, Claude Schopp learned who the model for Gustave Courbet’s famous painting, L’origine du monde, was. He supports his revelation with other sources. This book tells us everything that’s known about the dancer with the dark eyebrows who would soon become a demimondaine and the well-kept mistress of a rich man, and later a woman of good deeds, known for her charitable work. Through excerpts from her letters, articles and her will, he gradually offers a face and a soul to the woman whose genitalia are the very incarnation of Realism.