In 1917, Amedeo Modigliani’s paintings of nudes were so controversial that the police shut his exhibition down within a day. Which raises a fascinating question: why was a subject as old as the female nude suddenly so shocking?

The painting Nu assis au collier (pictured above) sits precisely at that moment of rupture. On the one hand, it’s deeply rooted in tradition, The female nude had been central to European painting for centuries (think of Titian, Ingres or even Manet). Modigliani is clearly drawing on that lineage. We see it in the pose, which recalls the Venus Pudica – that gesture of modesty where the hand both conceals and reveals.

There’s also something of Botticelli’s Venus in the downcast gaze and the sense of quiet introspection. Even the coral necklace carries a kind of symbolic ambiguity – it might suggest adornment, intimacy or even something devotional like a rosary.

Yet, despite these classical references, the effect is entirely modern and at the same time, deeply unsettling. When these works were first exhibited in Paris in 1917, the reaction was immediate. The gallery window display caused such offense that the police intervened, and the show was closed within hours.

What shocked audiences wasn’t simply nudity, it was the way the body was presented. Modigliani had removed everything that traditionally mediates or softens the nude. There’s no mythology, no narrative, no allegory, spiritual or moral. She isn’t Venus or an odalisque or part of a story. She is simply an ordinary woman in the nude. That directness is intensified by the stripped-back setting. The background is reduced to deep resonant tones with just the faintest architectural suggestion. It pushes the figure forward, making her presence almost confrontational in its immediacy. Modigliani’s handling of paint plays a crucial role here as well. The skin is warm, luminous, almost tactile while the brushwork is remarkably economical: just a few assured lines to define the face and body. It gives the figure a sense of both stylization and vitality. Compared to other avant-garde artists working in Paris at the time, Picasso for instance, Modigliani’s approach is less fragmented, less abstract. His figures remain continuous, sensuous and unmistakably human. But they are also completely unguarded. So perhaps the shock lay not in the fact of nudity but in its total openness. There is no coyness, no performance, and no narrative to engage the viewer in the act of looking. The body is simply there, without shame or mediation, like a subject intrinsically worthy of artistic expression. In that sense, this work perfectly embodies Modigliani’s broader ambition – to unite truth, life, beauty in art at a time when the world wasn’t ready for this unified view.

Truly innovative art always overturns habit and dramatically altering our ideas of what art is. In that sense, Modigliani belongs to that elite group of Parisian artists like Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi who dared to experiment and forever changed the art world.

Reference:

Sotheby’s London, Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection, 24 June 2006.