Secret Modigliani

Cariatides - Standing nudes arms open/crossed

Oil on cardboard? — 1911-12 ?

Date1911-12 ?
MediumOil on cardboard?
Size121.9 × 40.64 cm
CollectionPrivate Collection
SignatureUnsigned
Investigation61

standing nude arms crossed by amedeo modigliani
Identification

Title
English: Cariatide - Standing nude arms open - Standing nude arms crossed.
French: Cariatide - Nu.
Notes: Nudo in piedi a braccia semidistese (Ceroni); Cariatide (Sotheby's 2005); Nu (Pfannstiel 1929 and 1956); Standing Nude with Arms Open (Tate Papers, no. 35); Standing nude arms open / Nu debout les bras ouverts / Standing nude - Nu debout les bras ouverts - Nu debout les bras croisés | - Standing nude arms half open - Standing nude arms half crossed - Standing nude arms half open (Others).
Date
1911-12 ? (Tate Papers)
Medium
Oil on cardboard ?
Notes: Oil over pencil on board (Sotheby's 2005); oil on paper (Ceroni and Parisot).
Dimensions
121.9 × 40.64 cm?
Notes: 122 × 41 cm; 48 × 16⅛ in. (Sotheby's 2005); 121.9 × 40.64 cm (Others); 120 × 40 cm (Ceroni and Parisot)
Signature
Unsigned
Present location
Private Collection

Catalogue numbers

Compiler Number
Arthur Pfannstielno. 23 - 24
Joseph Lanthemannno. 488-489
Ambrogio Ceroni1958/ no. 24 -25; 1970 / no. 32-33
Jeanne ModiglianiYES
Christian Parisot2/1911-3/1911
Osvaldo Patanino. 36-37
Modigliani Project?
MRYES
Modigliani Initiative/ AMDC?

Legal note on MR: This investigation has not had access to MR’s catalogue raisonné; all research here is based on open sources, publications and exhibitions. By no means has that catalogue been copied at any point. Modigliani Project and Modigliani Initiative are marked YES when the work is published or otherwise recorded by those projects, even if no catalogue number is assigned; otherwise the field is marked ?.

Provenance

  1. Paul Alexandre Coll. Paris
  2. Private Collection (Acquired to Alexandre coll. in 1962)
  3. Sale: Sotheby's, German and Austrian art, Impressionist & modern art evening sale, 8/Feb/2005, Sale: LO5002 - Lot 38 (both) Estimate: 800.000 - 1.200.000 GBP Sold: 2.696.000 GBP

The sequence follows the published museum, sale, and catalogue record in this investigation. Gaps and uncertain transfers are marked as such.

Selected bibliography

Book-length publications are marked with a footnote giving a full citation. Exhibition catalogues appear in both this list and the exhibition list when this investigation recorded them in both places.

Exhibitions

No exhibitions were listed in this investigation.

Notes

Both paintings have been sold & published always together as a unit, no verso/recto information on auction sales, both paintings must be in the same frame?

Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.

Introduction

A naked woman stands upright on a narrow, very tall board. She is painted in a single coral-orange, from her piled-up hair to her feet. Her face is a long oval with heavy-lidded almond eyes, a long, straight nose and a small mouth. A string of dots marks a necklace at the base of the neck, and small pendants hang from her ears. Her breasts are drawn as two circles. Her arms hang from broad, square shoulders and then turn outward at the elbows, so that the forearms and open hands are held away from the hips, palms down, as if resting on something or offering something. Below a narrow waist the hips swell into a wide, pear-shaped mass. The legs are pressed together and taper to small feet. Behind her is a strong, scrubbed ultramarine blue. A black band runs across the top of the board, a pale grey-white zone fills the bottom, and around each hand there is a patch of white.
Ceroni catalogued this painting as no. 32, Nudo in piedi a braccia semidistese, "standing nude with arms half extended", and placed it in a U.S. private collection. His note is short: "Si deve considerare come uno studio creativo, effettuato durante l'attività scultorea" ("It should be considered a creative study, made during the period of sculptural activity"). It is one of a pair with no. 33, a standing nude with arms crossed, painted on a board of the same size. The two have always been sold and published together, and the Secret Modigliani page on the work treats them on a single page. This essay deals with no. 32. No. 33 is the subject of a companion essay.
These are among the very few paintings from the years when Modigliani was mainly a sculptor. The Tate Papers (no. 35) study of his painted nudes lists them first among "a series of nude caryatid-like figures inspired by Egyptian, Greek and Cambodian art (C32–39)".

Composition and format

The board measures about 122 by 41 centimetres according to Sotheby's, which gives 48 by 16⅛ inches. The proportion is almost exactly three to one, much taller and narrower than any of the standard French canvas formats. The support is in any case board, not canvas. The format is the format of a pillar or a pilaster, and the figure fills it from top to bottom. The head nearly touches the black band at the top, and the feet reach the lower edge. There is no room on either side for anything but a narrow strip of blue.
The figure is strictly frontal and almost symmetrical. The centre line runs through the parting of the hair, the nose, the necklace, the navel, the pubic triangle and the line between the legs. The silhouette is a sequence of swellings and narrowings: the small head, the long neck, the square shoulders, the narrow waist, the very broad hips and the tapering legs. It reads like a vase or a column with an entasis, and the resemblance to architecture is surely deliberate in a figure Modigliani conceived as a caryatid.
What sets this panel apart from its companion is the position of the arms. The upper arms run down close to the body, but the forearms turn outward and the hands are spread. This widens the silhouette at the level of the hips and creates two horizontal accents halfway down the board. The white patches around the hands make these accents stronger. In a caryatid the arms would normally be raised to support a load. Here they are lowered. If they suggest a load at all, it is a load resting on the hands from below, or perhaps a surface on which the hands rest, like the edge of a pedestal. The black band at the top of the panel could be read as the entablature that a caryatid carries on her head. But the figure does not touch it. The architectural function is suggested but not shown.

Line

The figure is drawn more than modelled. The contour is a single continuous line, darker on the right side of the body than on the left. Within the coral silhouette, the features are drawn in thin dark strokes: the lids and brows, the line of the nose, the small mouth, the circles of the breasts, the navel, the V of the groin and the line between the legs. The hair is drawn as a cap of wavy horizontal lines, piled up high on the head. The hands are drawn in outline with separated fingers, and the lines are more nervous than elsewhere.
Sotheby's describes the medium as "oil over pencil on board". Some of the dark lines in the reproduction, especially the angular marks in the pale zone at the lower left and the vertical dashes at the lower right, may be the underdrawing or drawing laid over the paint. This cannot be confirmed from a reproduction. The Jewish Museum's 2017–18 exhibition text observes that Modigliani's "heads and caryatids were drawn with architectural precision", and the precise symmetry of the face and torso fits that description. The lower part of the figure is drawn more loosely, and the line of the legs is broken.

Colour

The colour is reduced to three main areas: the coral-orange of the body, the ultramarine of the background and the black and grey-white of the top and bottom bands. The coral is warm and bright. It is not modelled with shadows, so the body has almost no volume. On the hips and thighs, however, the coral thins and becomes pinkish white in patches, and the brush has left lighter streaks. The figure seems to have been painted over a light ground that shows through.
The blue is intense, applied in broken, scrubbed strokes that leave white flecks. It is darker close to the figure, especially on the right, so that the body seems to glow against it. The black band at the top is thick and opaque, with softened edges. The bottom zone is a grey-white with some drawn lines, perhaps unpainted ground. Coral against ultramarine is a contrast of near-complementary colours. It makes the figure stand out with great force from a distance.
The flesh colour is not naturalistic. The Tate Papers list of the C32–39 series, and the Jewish Museum's text on Modigliani's caryatids, both stress non-European sources. The Jewish Museum's text says that Modigliani "adds elements derived from ancient South and Southeast Asian sources: facial features, postures, tattoos". Here the uniform coral, with its earrings and necklace, gives the figure the colour of painted terracotta or of a carved and painted idol rather than of flesh.

Facture

The paint is laid on quickly and unevenly. In the background, the blue has been scrubbed with a dry brush, so that it breaks over the surface and lets the lighter support show through. On the figure, the coral is smoother on the torso and head and thinner and streakier on the hips and legs. The hands and the white patches around them are painted rapidly, with loose strokes. At the lower edge the coral feet merge into the grey-white zone.
The overall impression is of a work painted rapidly and left at a certain stage. Ceroni's term "studio creativo" fits this. It is a study, but not a preparatory study for a known sculpture. It is a creative exercise in its own right.

Figure and space

The space is flat. The figure has no shadow except the darker blue along its right side, and there is no floor. The grey-white zone at the bottom might be read as a plinth or the ground, the black band at the top as an architrave. Between them the figure stands like a statue in a niche.
The figure is monumental but not heavy. The broad hips and thighs give weight to the lower half, while the small head, closed eyes and long neck give the upper half a remote, inward quality. The open, lowered hands are the only gesture. They give this panel a more open and approachable character than its companion, where the arms are folded across the body.

Iconography and models

The theme is the caryatid, the female figure that supports an entablature in Greek architecture. The Jewish Museum's 2017–18 exhibition text puts the theme into context: "In 1911 Modigliani began to explore another motif borrowed from ancient art: the Greek figure of the caryatid. He produced innumerable drawings and paintings of standing or kneeling statuesque figures upholding an unseen architectural weight." It adds that Modigliani's caryatids are "kneeling in three-quarter view, standing in contrapposto, or rigorously hieratic". This panel belongs to the third type.
The Sotheby's catalogue note of 2005 says that the two panels have "a strong sculptural character, visible in the heavy, voluminous quality of the female bodies". It argues that "the artist was less interested in anatomical details, than in the immediate effect derived from 'primitive' African and Oceanic art". It also links the panels to Brancusi and to Picasso's Deux femmes nues of 1906 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). It quotes Noël Alexandre, the son of the first owner: "Modigliani was enchanted by these figures – at once real and unreal – whose inflexibility, imposed by their functional role, is relieved by the fantasy of their being atlantes or idealised women." These are interpretations, and I report them as such.
What the painting itself shows supports a mixed source. The piled-up, wavy hair, the necklace and earrings and the closed almond eyes are close to the faces of Modigliani's stone heads. The frontal stance and lowered arms recall Egyptian standing figures and early Greek korai. The swelling hips recall prehistoric and non-European figurines. The Tate Papers list of the series names "Egyptian, Greek and Cambodian art" as sources. One further comparison is suggestive, though it is my own and not made by any source for this panel. In the caryatid section of its 2017–18 exhibition, the Jewish Museum showed a Tibetan gilt-bronze Green Tara, whose "right arm [is] in a traditional gesture of giving". The lowered, open hands of C32 are not the same gesture, but they share its sense of offering, and they fit the Jewish Museum's description of Modigliani's caryatids as "ascendant, generous, and graceful". For comparative works, it cites Thierry Dufrêne's book of 2020, which I have not seen.

Comparisons

The companion panel, Standing Nude with Arms Crossed (C33). The two panels are the same size and painted in the same coral and blue. The differences are telling. In C33, the arms are folded under the breasts and the silhouette is closed and compact. The hair is a smooth cap, and a dark contour runs around the figure like a shadow. In C32, the arms open, the hair is wavy and piled up, and the black and white bands at top and bottom add architectural elements. C33 is the more hieratic, C32 the more open and complex.
Standing Nude with Crossed Arms (C34), Nagoya City Art Museum. This smaller work (about 83 by 48 centimetres) shows the crossed-arms pose of C33 in a pale, bluish figure against a light ground. In pose it is close to C33 rather than C32, but it shares with C32 the wavy, segmented hair.
Caryatid (C35), Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Here the caryatid kneels and raises her arms to support a slab. It is a full statement of the architectural function that C32 only hints at.
The limestone caryatids. The Sotheby's note reproduces the limestone Nu debout, c. 1911–12, in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, as its fig. 1. The Jewish Museum's 2017–18 checklist includes the limestone Caryatid of c. 1914 in the Museum of Modern Art, 92.1 cm high. The Museum of Modern Art's 1951 catalogue, with an introduction by James Thrall Soby, says that Modigliani's sculpture was concerned with "the caryatid and the corbelled head", and that "his instinct was for direct carving". The coral panels are, in Ceroni's words, a "creative study" made in the same period.

Provenance and exhibitions

The provenance of the pair is short. According to Sotheby's, both belonged to Dr Paul Alexandre, Paris, and were "Acquired by the family of the present owner on 29th March 1962". The Secret Modigliani page gives "Private Collection (Acquired to Alexandre coll. in 1962)". The pair was sold at Sotheby's in the evening sale German and Austrian Art, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale and Surrealist Art, sale L05002, lot 38, with an estimate of £800,000–1,200,000, and sold for £2,696,000.

Discrepancies

  1. One page for two Ceroni numbers. Each painting has its own Ceroni number and caption: "Nudo in piedi a braccia semidistese… Ceroni N°32" and "Nudo in piedi, a braccia conserte… Ceroni N°33". The other catalogues (Pfannstiel, Ceroni 1958, Lanthemann, Parisot, Patani) also give two numbers.
  2. Medium. "Oil over pencil on board" (Sotheby's); "Oil on cardboard?" (Secret Modigliani); "oil on paper" (Ceroni and Parisot).
  3. Dimensions. 122 × 41 cm and 48 × 16⅛ in. (Sotheby's); 121.9 × 40.64 cm (Secret Modigliani); 120 × 40 cm (Ceroni and Parisot).
  4. Title. Ceroni's "a braccia semidistese" (arms half extended) has been rendered as "arms open" (Tate Papers) and "arms half open" (Secret Modigliani). Sotheby's titles the lot simply Cariatide.
  5. Frame. The Secret Modigliani page asks whether "both paintings must be in the same frame?" No source I found.

Technical analysis

No technical study of this painting has been published, as far as I could find. It is not among the works examined in the Burlington Magazine introduction of 2018 or in the Tate Papers no. 35. The only technical information is the description "oil over pencil on board" in the Sotheby's catalogue, and the observation on the Secret Modigliani page that there is "no verso/recto information on auction sales".
Support (comparative). Board is unusual in Modigliani's painting but not unknown. The Tate Papers study of hidden paintings states that "During the early years of his career, Modigliani painted on various kinds of support, from cardboard to canvas", and that his choice "was largely influenced by his precarious financial situation". The study of the painted nudes states that plain-weave canvas "appears to have been the artist's exclusive choice of support after 1916". The board supports of the caryatid years thus belong to an earlier, more experimental phase. Whether this board is cardboard, paper laid on board or a wood-based panel is not settled by the sources. The disagreement between "board", "cardboard" and "paper" may reflect exactly this uncertainty.
Underdrawing. Sotheby's states that the paint lies "over pencil". The Sotheby's 2014 catalogue note on C31 quotes Paul Alexandre's description of Modigliani's method: he began "by first drawing (often in blue) the outline". In the present panel, a pencil drawing below or around the paint would fit the linear character of the figure. Infrared reflectography would show whether the drawing below differs from the painted contour, but no such examination has been published.
Ground and paint (comparative only). The Burlington introduction reports that the canvases it examined "seem to have been commercially prepared with an oil-based priming". That finding concerns canvas and cannot be transferred to board. In the reproduction, the thin, scrubbed blue and the pale patches on the figure suggest that a light ground, or the light board itself, was left to show through. The intense blue may be ultramarine or cobalt. Comparative: the Tate study of C40 identified cobalt blue in that painting's highlights. Without analysis, the pigment of this blue cannot be named.

Conclusion

The Standing Nude with Arms Half Extended is a figure poised between a body and a building. It fills a tall, narrow board like a pilaster. It is framed by a black band above and a pale zone below, and painted in one coral against one blue. Its open, lowered hands give it a gentleness absent from its companion with crossed arms. Ceroni called it a "creative study, made during the period of sculptural activity". It is best understood not as a study for a known sculpture but as a parallel experiment, in paint, on the theme that dominated Modigliani's sculpture from 1911 to 1913.
The documentation is short, but it raises real questions: the material of the support, the place of the 2005 sale, the conversion of the dimensions and the original relationship between the two panels. A technical examination of the pair, together if possible, would answer most of them.

Museum, auction and exhibition sources

  1. Sotheby's, German and Austrian Art, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale and Surrealist Art, 2005, sale L05002, lot 38, Amedeo Modigliani, Cariatide (pair; description, provenance, literature and catalogue note), https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2005/german-and-austrian-art-impressionist-and-modern-art-evening-sale-and-surrealist-art-l05002/lot.38.html
  2. The Jewish Museum, New York, Modigliani Unmasked, large-print exhibition guide, https://thejewishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Modigliani_Large_Print_FINAL.pdf
  3. The Jewish Museum, New York, Modigliani Unmasked (2017–18), checklist, https://thejewishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Modigliani_Unmasked_checklist.pdf
  4. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art, Modigliani: Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture, introduction by James Thrall Soby (1951), https://assets.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2916_300191634.pdf
  5. Sotheby's, Paris, Art Impressionniste et Moderne, 4 June 2014, sale PF1406, lot 9, Amedeo Modigliani, Portrait de Paul Alexandre (catalogue note quoting Paul Alexandre on Modigliani's method), https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2014/art-impressionniste-et-moderne-pf1406/lot.9.html

Technical literature (comparative)

  1. Barbara Buckley et al., "Modigliani's Painted Nudes: A Technical Study", Tate Papers, no. 35, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/modiglianis-painted-nudes-technical-study
  2. Anaïs Genty-Vincent et al., "Works by Modigliani that have Paintings beneath the Visible Surface", Tate Papers, no. 35, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/works-by-modigliani-that-have-paintings-beneath-the-visible-surface
  3. Annette King, Nancy Ireson, Simonetta Fraquelli and Joyce H. Townsend, "The Modigliani Technical Research Study: An introduction to Modigliani's materials and techniques", The Burlington Magazine, vol. 160, no. 1380 (March 2018), pp. 182–88, https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/article/the-modigliani-technical-research-study-an-introduction-to-modiglianis-materials-and-techniques

Cited but not independently consulted

Pfannstiel, Modigliani, 1929, p. 5, and Modigliani et son œuvre, 1956, p. 63, nos. 23 & 24; Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani peintre, 1958, nos. 24 & 25; Lanthemann, 1970, nos. 488–489; Ceroni and Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, 1970, nos. 32 & 33, p. 89; Parisot, 1991, nos. 2/1911–3/1911; Patani, Catalogo generale, 1991, nos. 36 & 37, p. 66; Soto Caba, 2007; Noël Alexandre, in Unknown Modigliani: Drawings from the Collection of Paul Alexandre, Royal Academy, London, 1993, p. 189; Fraquelli and Ireson (eds.), Modigliani, Tate Modern, 2017, pp. 28–29; Thierry Dufrêne, Modigliani, Paris, 2020, pp. 77–87. All are cited from the Secret Modigliani page on the work, the Sotheby's lot page or the Tate Papers study of the nudes.

Footnotes

  1. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani. L’Art et la Vie, preface by Louis Latourette, Paris, Seheur, 1929 (presumed catalogue).
  2. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts, 1956.
  3. Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani: Peintre; suivi des souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska, Milan, Edizioni del Milione, 1958.
  4. Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, Barcelona, G. Condal, 1970.
  5. Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, Rizzoli, 1970.
  6. Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani: catalogo generale, Milan, Leonardo, 1991–94.
  7. Christian Parisot, Catalogue raisonné Modigliani, Livorno, Graphis Arte, 1991.
  8. Victoria Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, Madrid, Libsa, 2007.