Elvira riposa a un tavolo

Modigliani painted this in 1919, and he had about a year left. He was 34, tubercular, drinking hard, and had come back to a Paris just emerging from the war. The sitter is a young woman he knew only as Elvira, a model he painted four times in his last two years. He gives her his usual mask-like calm, the long neck and the almond eyes tipped with blue, but she sits solidly at a table, arms crossed, meeting you head on. He died that January, at 35. His companion Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, took her own life two days later.