1. Gustave Courbet ‘The Origin of the World’
Thank God ‘Brazilians’ weren’t common in the 19th century! This is by far the most graphic erotic painting ever created. Gustave Courbet’s painting ‘The Origin of the World’ hangs on the wall of the The Musée Orsay in Paris. It is a painting that portrays a woman’s thighs, torso, and, at the centre of attention, her unshaven genitals. The Orsay website celebrate this masterpiece of Art, and describe it as; “Courbet regularly painted female nudes, sometimes in a frankly libertine vein. But in The Origin of the World he went to lengths of daring and frankness which gave his painting its peculiar fascination. The almost anatomical description of female sex organs is not attenuated by any historical or literary device.” This painting was in no doubt privately commissioned by a specialist collector and is by far one of the most graphic depictions of the female anatomy ever painted.