Nude with a Hat

Modigliani had been in Paris two years when he made this, and 1908 was the year he first showed in public, six paintings at the Salon des Independants. Canvas cost money, and this one carries work on both sides. He painted the nude first, then turned the canvas over and upside down and put a portrait of his friend Maud Abrantes on the back.

In 2010 the Hecht Museum announced that its director, Ofra Rimon, showing the picture to visitors, had made out a face in the area of Maud's neck and chest, an earlier portrait of another woman that Modigliani had blurred over with the brush before starting again. X-rays taken in 2022, while the painting was being prepared for an exhibition at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, found two more figures underneath, a man and a woman with her hair pinned up. One of the museum's art historians described the canvas as a sketchbook.