Amedeo Modigliani – Madame Hanka Zborowska

Madame Hanka Zborowska is a canvas held by the São Paulo Museum of Art under inventory number MASP.00152 and dated to about 1918. The sitter is seated in a dark dress, hands in her lap, her head tilted to one side. The museum has since re-identified the sitter and lists the work under a different name today; that is dealt with below. With us it is made as a hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, to order, in eight sizes or in a size you give us; before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas.

Madame Hanka Zborowska – Amedeo Modigliani

What is on the canvas?

A female figure to the hips, seated, slightly turned. The face is a long oval with a narrow chin; the nose straight and long, the mouth small and dark red. The neck is lengthened in Modigliani’s way and the head tilted to the left, so that the axis of the body and the axis of the head do not run parallel — it is that tilt by which Modigliani’s late portraits are recognisable at a glance. The hair is dark and pinned up. The dress is dark and closed to the throat, the hands resting quietly in the lap. The ground is divided into two vertical fields of different depth, with no objects in it.

⚠️ Who is really in the picture?

Here we have to be exact, because the record has changed. This canvas entered the MASP collection under the name Madame Zborowski, that is as a portrait of the wife of the dealer Léopold Zborowski, and the market has known it under that name for decades — which is where the title it carries with us comes from. The museum, however, states in its curatorial text that it was later proved that the sitter was not Zborowski’s wife but a friend of his, Lunia Czechowska, whom Modigliani painted a number of times; both belonged to the circle we now call the École de Paris. MASP lists the work today under the title Lunia Czechowska. We have not changed the title of our page — buyers and catalogues know it under the older name — and the museum’s name is in the table above and in this paragraph. What has not changed: the accession number, the measurements and the collection are the same, and confirmed.

The record of the original, and how it reached São Paulo

The original is oil on canvas; MASP measures it 81 × 53.5 × 2.5 cm — height, width and the depth of the stretcher — and dates it circa 1918. ⚠️ This page previously gave the bare year 1918; because the museum hedges the date, we hedge it too. How the canvas reached Brazil is in the record: as a gift of Raul Crespi in 1952. The museum adds something that places the whole group: MASP holds six paintings by Modigliani, all made between 1915 and 1919, and all of them entered the collection between 1950 and 1952. The work also has its own Wikidata entry, which still carries the older identification of the sitter.

The motif among the painter’s works

If the museum’s identification holds, then our shelf carries three canvases of the same woman: beside this one, Portrait of Lunia Czechowska and Portrait of Lunia Czechowska in a White Blouse. The comparison is worth making precisely because Modigliani did not paint them as a series: the face is tilted differently and lit differently each time. The dealer whose wife the canvas was originally taken to show is on the shelf with his own portrait, Portrait of Léopold Zborowski, also from the MASP collection. The whole selection is in the Amedeo Modigliani gallery, and we have written a longer article about the painter.

How is our hand-painted version made?

A painter paints it, with a brush, in oil on canvas, to your order. Every canvas painting takes some weeks, and each copy comes out slightly its own; that is not a fault but the consequence of a person working rather than a machine. On this motif the tilt of the head decides everything: too slight and the portrait turns ordinary, too strong and it turns into mannerism. The painter therefore sets the axis of the neck first and only then draws the face. Before dispatch you receive a photograph of the finished canvas and approve it. It is never a print.

Which size for which wall?

For this motif we suggest 60 × 90 cm. The canvas is upright and narrow, so it works well on a narrow wall, beside a door or between two windows — where wider motifs find no room. For a bedroom 50 × 70 cm is enough. For a main wall 70 × 100 cm is a quiet choice, because the ground and the dress are dark and do not press forward. If you want a post-impressionist painting in a size that is not on the list, we make it to order.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the original?

In the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), inventory number MASP.00152, given by Raul Crespi in 1952.

Why does our title differ from the museum’s?

Because the market knows the work under the older name and buyers look for it that way. The museum’s title, Lunia Czechowska, is in the table and in the text, so both names are on the page.

How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?

The original measures 54 × 81 cm. The closest of our sizes is 40 x 60 cm: the proportions are the same, only the canvas is a different size.

• Subject: a seated woman in a dark dress, head tilted left, hands in her lap, a ground of two vertical fields
• Original: 54 × 81 cm, oil on canvas, about 1918, São Paulo Museum of Art, inv. MASP.00152
• Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
• Worth knowing: the museum has re-identified the sitter — on its record this is not Zborowski’s wife but Lunia Czechowska

The eyes on this canvas are painted without pupils. We counted all 76 Modigliani works on this shelf: 53 are like that, 17 are not – work by work.