Reclining Nude

A nude woman lies stretched diagonally across the canvas, her warm golden body and serene, almond-eyed face elongated into Modigliani's signature sinuous stylization, filling the frame with calm sensuality. He drew on African masks, Cycladic figures, and Renaissance Venuses to remake the reclining nude for the modern age. Now in the Metropolitan Museum and among the most valuable paintings ever sold, the Reclining Nude is a high point of his brief, intense career - the female form purified into elegant line and glowing color, sensuous yet strangely tender and remote.