naked lying

Description

Reclining nude "- Amedeo Modigliani - 1917, oil on canvas

dimensions 60 x 92 cm. "Metropolitan Museum of Art", New York

Modigliani's famous series of reclining nudes, begun in 1916, is influenced by Italian Renaissance representations of Venus and other idealized female figures. In this painting from 1917, the stylized and outlined body of the model, seen up close and from above, covers the entire canvas; her hands and feet disappear out of the frame and her creamy skin glows against the bed or dark red sofa. Unlike the depictions, from Venus from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, in which female nudity is expressed in mythology or allegory, Modigliani provocatively presents her reclining nude without any such context, highlighting the eroticism of the painting.