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Amadeo Modigliani

#amadeo modigliani

Jeanne Hébuterne

Artist: Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920)

Date: 1918

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA, United States

About this painting

With elongated proportions and mask-like faces, Modigliani’s mature portraits share an unsettling family likeness. The pictures he painted of one sitter, however, are distinguished by particular grace and reverence. Modigliani met Jeanne Hébuterne, an aspiring artist, in the summer of 1917; she fell passionately in love and, in November of the following year, bore him the daughter she may already have been carrying when she sat for this picture, assuming the pose of an Italian Renaissance Virgin Annunciate. Born in Italy, Modigliani had moved to Paris in 1906, immersing himself in the bohemian artistic communities of Montmartre and Montparnasse. He frequented Picasso’s studio, dabbled in Cubism, and developed an addiction to drugs and alcohol. By the time he met Hébuterne, he was already gravely ill but had evolved the distinctive style - influenced by Botticelli and the early Italian masters - deployed in this picture.