Woman with Earrings

Paris in 1917 was a city at war, and Modigliani was painting portrait after portrait of the people around him in Montparnasse. Models, dealers, other artists, women whose names are often lost. This is one of them. By now he had settled into the manner everyone recognizes: the long oval face, the tilted neck, the eyes left as flat almond shapes with no pupils. That mask-like calm came out of his years as a sculptor, when he cut heads in stone and studied African and ancient carvings. He was already gravely ill with tuberculosis. In December of that same year his first and only solo show opened nearby, and the police ordered a nude taken out of the window on opening day.