Amedeo Modigliani – Lola de Valence

Lola de Valence – a hand-painted reproduction of the Modigliani

Lola de Valence is a Modigliani of 1915, and among our reproductions of famous paintings it is one of the severest: a head alone, built almost cubistically, with the title painted onto the picture itself. The original is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Ours is a hand-painted fine art reproduction, oil on canvas.

What is on the picture

A head and a long neck fill almost the whole surface. The face is a broad salmon-orange plane, asymmetric, with a hard black contour down the left profile; the eyes are simple dark closed slits under strong brows; the nose is a long outline, and the small mouth shows teeth, painted as a few white strokes. A large ear is drawn in outline at the right, with a strand of hair falling beside it like a string of beads. Behind, cream panels with cross-hatched lines stand at the upper left and right, and at the left a dark brown field carries the title painted in pale block capitals — LOL / DE / VALEN — cut off by the edge of the picture. The signature stands at the lower left.

A title painted onto the picture

Modigliani wrote this work’s name onto the surface itself, as he lettered Béatrice’s name across the top of the picture that also stands on this shelf. It is not a signature and it is not a museum label — it is part of the painting, which is exactly why our reproduction does not leave it out. Lola de Valence is also the name of a Spanish dancer painted half a century earlier by Édouard Manet; what Modigliani meant by borrowing it the museum does not explain, and neither do we. We report only what can be seen: that the title is on the picture, and that the edge of the support has cut part of it away.

The record of the original

⚠️ The original is not on canvas. The museum gives the technique as oil on paper, mounted on a wood panel — and it shows in the photograph, where a reddish edge of the support is visible on all four sides. It measures 52.1 cm high and 33.7 cm wide; we give width first, so on our page it reads 33.7 x 52.1 cm, and the specification names the order in words as well. The number is 67.187.84, and the work came to the museum in 1967 as the bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot. The museum publishes nothing about ownership before that and neither do we. Our own picture is oil on canvas in the proportions of the original — that difference of support is the one thing worth knowing.

What you receive

Our painter works the picture by hand, oil on canvas, at the size you choose. The subject is small at its original measurement but strongly graphic: broad planes, hard lines and a single warm skin tone. That is why it carries a large enlargement well and works as a standalone accent on a quiet wall. Because it is a head without a setting, it also hangs well in narrow recesses and hallways. When the canvas is finished we photograph it and send you the photograph for approval. You choose the frame in our 3D application, and our reproductions on canvas leave the atelier stretched. Every painting we make is hand-painted and never printed.

The Italian Woman and Boy in a Striped Sweater stand on this shelf from the same museum — three New York pictures that read together.

• The Italian Woman
• Boy in a Striped Sweater