The Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve said it had its Facebook account blocked by the social networking giant after publishing an explicit image of a woman's genitals.

The Swiss daily Tribune de Geneve said Friday it had its Facebook account blocked by the social networking giant after publishing an explicit image of a woman's genitals.

In a bid to illustrate an article on cosmetic surgery, the newspaper ran an image taken from Gustave Courbet's 1886 oil painting "The Origin Of The World", which shows a reclining nude.

The newspaper, which described the article as "very serious", said that the image was deleted by only hours after it was published, and that the Californian firm had carried out online checks of the daily's IT administrators.