Description
The Italian Woman is a canvas the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York dates to about 1918–19, under the number 56.4. The sitter is upright and frontal in a dark green-black dress with a crisp white collar, against a warm salmon-orange wall. 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.
| Title: | The Italian Woman |
| Other titles: | L’Italienne · Sitzende Frau (Die Italienerin), the forms used in catalogues |
| Painter: | Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) |
| Year of creation: | ca. 1918–19 — the museum’s own wording: approximate, and a range |
| Original size (width × height): | 67 × 102.6 cm |
| Original technique: | oil on canvas |
| Painting style: | expressionism, École de Paris |
| Located: | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. 56.4, Gift of The Chester Dale Collection, 1956) |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted copy, oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size |
The Italian Woman – Amedeo Modigliani
What is on the canvas?
The sitter is shown to the hips, frontally, her hands folded low in her lap with the fingers showing. Dark brown hair is parted at the centre and gathered into two heavy masses beside the face. The face is long, oval and pale, with pink cheeks; the eyes are dark almonds and they carry pupils, the nose is long and straight, the mouth small and red. She wears a dark green-black high-necked dress over which falls a crisp white collar, with white cuffs at both wrists. The ground is a warm salmon-orange wall filling most of the canvas; a pale grey-green vertical band runs down the right edge, and the orange-brown back of a chair shows at the lower left. The signature stands at the upper right.
Why is the date written as a range?
Because the museum wrote it that way, and the wording is doing work. Its record reads ca. 1918–19: not a year, but an approximation across two of them. We carry it exactly as it stands rather than reducing it to a single figure, which is the easy thing to do and the wrong one. The open databases are no help here either, and it is worth saying why: Wikidata holds this work at decade precision, which means it makes no claim about a year at all. So there is no second opinion to weigh against the museum — there is the museum’s hedge, and nothing else. On this shelf that puts the picture at one end of a range: Madam Pompadour carries a year the painter wrote onto the canvas himself, and this one carries a museum’s honest approximation.
The record of the original, and what the museum does not say
The original is oil on canvas. The museum measures it 102.6 cm high and 67 cm wide; we give width first, so on our page it reads 67 × 102.6 cm. The number is 56.4 and the acquisition is a single line: the Gift of The Chester Dale Collection, 1956. Before that the museum publishes no ownership history, so we state none. It also does not mention a signature, though it is there on the photograph, modigliani at the upper right, and we read it ourselves — where we can see more than the institution publishes we say so as our own observation. One small detail worth reporting because it shows the record is per-object and not a blanket policy: for this work the museum marks its own photograph as public domain, while for Boy in a Striped Sweater, on this same shelf and in the same museum, it does not. The museum’s page rate-limits automated readers, so the link above is registered against its public API record, which answers with this work’s artist, title, accession and date. The work also has its own Wikidata entry.
The motif among the painter’s works
Three of this museum’s Modiglianis stand on this shelf, and they read well together because they are so unalike: this one, the boy above, and Jeanne Hébuterne in a White Chemise. For the same treatment of a seated woman against a plain wall there is Portrait of Lunia Czechowska in a White Blouse, where a white collar does the same work of catching the only light. They all come out of the same milieu, the École de Paris — the loose company of foreign painters on Montparnasse. 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 the consequence of a person working rather than a machine. On this motif everything hangs on one contrast: a warm salmon-orange wall against a dress that is almost black. The orange has to stay warm without going acid, because it fills most of the surface and any shift in it changes the whole picture; and the dress has to stay a colour rather than becoming a hole, which means keeping the green in the green-black instead of reaching for black out of the tube. The white collar and cuffs are the only bright notes and they are small — painted a little too large or too white, they pull the eye away from 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 70 × 110 cm. Of the sizes we offer, 60 × 92 cm follows the proportions of the original most closely, and by a wide margin: its shape differs from the original’s by about 0.13 per cent, while the next-nearest size on the list is twelve times further off. The picture carries one large colour contrast, so it works best on a quiet, light wall where the orange competes with nothing; on a strong colour it fights. Because the sitter is frontal and looks straight out, it takes both closeness and a large format, and 90 × 140 cm will hold a main wall. A post-impressionist painting in a size that is not on the list is no trouble: we make it to order.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the original?
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, accession number 56.4, the Gift of The Chester Dale Collection, 1956.
Who is the sitter?
The museum does not name her; the title describes her only as Italian. We add nothing the record does not carry.
Why does the year say “ca. 1918–19”?
Because that is the museum’s own wording — approximate, and spanning two years. We do not shorten it to one.
How closely does it follow the original’s proportions?
The original measures 67 × 102.6 cm. The closest of our sizes is 60 x 92 cm, which departs from the original’s proportions by 0.13%.
- Subject: a woman to the hips, frontal, dark green-black dress with a white collar and cuffs, hands folded low, a warm salmon-orange wall behind
- Original: 67 × 102.6 cm, oil on canvas, ca. 1918–19, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 56.4
- Ours: hand-painted oil on canvas, eight sizes or a custom size, with a photograph to approve before dispatch
- Worth knowing: the museum dates it with a hedge and a range, and Wikidata holds it only at decade precision — so the museum’s approximation is the whole of what is known
The eyes on this canvas do have pupils. Of the 76 Modigliani works on this shelf 17 are like that, and 53 have no pupils – work by work.
