Women Of Substance

Ahead of a new exhibition on Modigliani, Catriona Gray looks back on the female poets and artists who inspired his work

“When I know your soul I will paint your eyes,” Amedeo Modigliani once said. Nearly all his portraits of women have faces with almond-shaped apertures, like those of the classical sculptures that he admired as a boy in his native Italy, their forms strangely haunting with their elongated faces and necks.

Women were among the most significant influences in the artist’s short life, from his mother, who fostered his interest in art, to the muses that he met when he moved to Paris. His sitters were frequently the ones with whom he had romantic relationships—all were creative in their own right, and had been lured to the City of Light for its liberal atmosphere. The first notable candidate was the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Tall and pale with a cloud of dark hair, she represented Modigliani’s aesthetic ideal; they embarked upon an affair until Akhmatova eventually returned to her husband.