Pedro the Typographer

Almost every person Modigliani painted comes with a name and a story attached, a dealer, a poet, a neighbour in Montparnasse. This one has a first name and a trade. Pedro set type, standing at a case of metal letters and building lines of text by hand, skilled work that paid badly in the Paris of 1909, and nothing further about him has ever been established. That silence left room for a theory. The square face, the heavy brows and the level stare resemble a photograph of Modigliani taken in Florence that same year closely enough that some writers read the picture as the painter looking at himself. The canvas had an earlier life too. Under the deep blue background lies another painting, a woman in a yellow jacket, covered over when he needed the cloth again.