The Modigliani Nude That Shocked Paris | Sotheby’s

Why It Matters

The episode highlights a pivotal moment in modern art when directness and realism challenged social mores and censorship, underscoring why such works became culturally and financially consequential for collectors and institutions. It also clarifies Modigliani’s role in reshaping expectations about nudity, form and artistic truth.

Summary

Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu assis au collier, shown in Paris in 1917, caused immediate scandal and had its exhibition shut by police because its frank, unmediated depiction of the female nude broke with accepted conventions. While rooted in classical precedents — a Venus Pudica pose, Botticellian gaze and symbolic coral necklace — Modigliani strips away myth, narrative and ornament, using a spare background, warm tactile skin tones and economical line to make the figure confrontationally present. Unlike contemporaries who fragmented form, his sensuous, continuous treatment made the work feel both timeless and audaciously modern. Within the Lewis collection the painting exemplifies a collector’s interest in works that bridge art-historical tradition and quiet innovation.

Original Description

Coming to auction this June in Sotheby’s London’s Masterpieces from the Lewis Collection, discover an important Modigliani portrait that made waves in Paris. This work is on view in London, 10 - 23 June, with the evening auction taking place on 24 June.

In 1917, a group of nude paintings hanging in a Paris gallery window caused such outrage that the police intervened and closed the exhibition almost immediately. The artist was Amedeo Modigliani, and the works at the center of the storm have since become icons of modern art. Yet the mystery remains: why did these paintings provoke such a reaction when artists had been painting the nude for centuries?

At the heart of the answer is Nu assis au collier. Rooted in the traditions of Titian, Botticelli and the Venus Pudica, the painting feels familiar at first glance. Look closer, however, and something shifts. Stripped of mythology, narrative and convention, the figure confronts the viewer with an unusual immediacy. It is a work poised between old worlds and new ones, between timeless beauty and modern disruption—a tension that continues to resonate more than a hundred years later.

Learn more about about the collection by visiting sothebys.com/lewiscollection

Still haven’t subscribed to Sotheby’s on YouTube? ►►https://www.youtube.com/sothebys/

Want more information on the sale ? ►►https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2026/masterpieces-from-the-lewis-collection-l26900?lotFilter=AllLots

#Modigliani #ModernArt #ArtHistory #FineArt #Painting #AmedeoModigliani #ArtCollector #ArtWorld #MuseumQuality #Masterpiece #Sothebys #ArtMarket