Madam Pompadour
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
61.1 × 50.2 cm (24 1/16 × 19 3/4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Modern Art
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
27281
Art Historical Context
Amedeo Modigliani’s “Madam Pompadour,” painted in 1915, offers an intimate glimpse into the artist’s Paris studio during the First World War. The modest oil-on-canvas portrait, now in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Art collection, measures just over two feet high, inviting close viewing. Its title playfully evokes the 18th-century French court favorite Madame de Pompadour, suggesting the sitter’s elegance or perhaps a nickname shared among Modigliani’s circle. Modigliani worked in the modernist circles of Montmartre and Montparnasse, distilling the human figure into graceful, elongated...
About the Artist
Amedeo Modigliani · 1884–1920
Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor whose elegant, elongated figures and portraits rank among the most instantly recognizable images in modern art. Born in Livorno, Tuscany, to a Sephardic Jewish family, he studied at the academies of Florence and Venice before moving permanently to Paris in 1906, where he immersed himself in the bohemian artistic milieu of Montmartre...