As lower halves of human torsos go, it is one of the most famous in art history, recycled in too many naughty cartoons to count: the plump belly and splayed thighs intersecting in the unmistakably feminine crotch that make up “The Origin of the World,†Gustave Courbet’s 1866 barnburner of a nude.
The painting, once owned by the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and displayed in a kind of secluded passageway in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2008 Courbet retrospective, shows a woman’s naked body only as far up as her breasts, partially covered with a sheet. But Paris Match reported on Wednesday that an unnamed collector believes that he has discovered the top half of Courbe’s portrait, which apparently lay unrecognized for years in an antique shop.
The collector, whose name was not disclosed, found the canvas of a reclining woman in 2010, and Paris Match reported that it has now been authenticated after a series of tests by Jean-Jacques Fernier, one of the world’s leading Courbet experts. Courbet is known to have painted “Origin of the World,†which now hangs in the Musee d’Orsay, almost full-length and then cut it down, removing the top part possibly to protect the identity of the sitter, who is thought by some to have been Joanna Hiffernan, a model and a muse not only to Courbet, but also Whistler, who painted her in “Symphony in White, No. 1†in 1861-62.
Frederique Thomas-Martin, the chief curator of the Courbet museum in Ornans, the artist’s birthplace, told the newspaper Libération that she was not convinced the discovery was by Courbet, and the official organization of the museums of France has ma! de no statement about the news. But Mr. Fernier said he was convinced and added that the only question remaining for him was whether the discovery would end up diminishing “the marvelous mystery and symbolism†of the painting as it is now known, in its much earthier, topless, state.
