Abstract

Little information has been collected to date about the so called Portrait of Maud Abrantes, executed in 1908 by Amedeo Modigliani. Drawing on various sources, such as chronicles, directories, vital records and other archival documents, we can now unveil the true identity of the woman who posed for Modigliani. She was a girl of 22 who had come to Paris from Chicago eight years earlier with her mother and her two sisters to study singing. This identification provides a better understanding of the culture and milieu that both the artist and the model were part of and also throws light on the values informing Modigliani’s portraiture.