Portrait of Léopold Zborowski

In 1916 Léopold Zborowski was 27, a Polish poet from Galicia living in Paris and making his money dealing in books, prints and pictures. That year he met Modigliani and began selling for him. This is the first of six portraits the painter made of him.

The museum's own note points to the folded arms and the self-assurance in them. The head is tilted, the eyes pale blue.

Zborowski went on handling Modigliani's work for 12 years after the painter died in 1920. The Depression took what he had built, and he died in Paris in 1932, at 43. His widow sold the collection and it scattered. The picture reached Jerusalem in 2004, on long-term loan from a Swiss foundation.