アントニア

All we know of the woman in this portrait is her first name, Antonia. Modigliani painted her in Paris in 1915, in the middle of the First World War, when both canvas and money were scarce. He had recently given up carving stone, which his weak lungs could no longer stand, and thrown himself back into painting. You can see him borrowing from the Cubists around him. The nose is drawn down both sides at once, and the two ears do not match, as if the face were shown from the front and in profile at the same time. The green eyes have no pupils. When conservators later looked beneath the surface with modern imaging, they found four earlier pictures underneath. He had painted this poor canvas over and over before Antonia finally settled on it.