Roma Woman with Baby

Roma Woman with Baby is a powerful oil on canvas painting created by Amedeo Modigliani in 1919. Executed during the final year of the artist’s life, this work distills the refined synthesis of influences Modigliani achieved during the transitional 1901 to 1925 period, merging Renaissance structural principles with avant-garde abstraction.

The subject matter depicts a mother tenderly holding her infant. While the title suggests the subjects belong to the Roma community, the painting transcends specific identity through Modigliani’s distinct stylistic choices. The figures are rendered with the artist’s characteristic elongation, featuring smooth, cylindrical necks and small, almond-shaped facial features that often lack pupils, giving the subjects a sense of profound introspection or timeless serenity.

Modigliani applied the oil paint smoothly yet richly, favoring a restrained palette of deep ochres, reds, and cool blues to define the contours of the figures against a simplified background. This approach minimizes external distractions, focusing the viewer’s attention solely on the psychological relationship between the two forms. As an Italian artist working primarily in Paris, Modigliani bridged classical traditions with emerging Modernist aesthetics, particularly drawing inspiration from African masks and sculptural forms, which heavily informed the geometric simplification evident in this piece.

The focus on idealized yet individualized portraiture demonstrates Modigliani’s contribution to post-Impressionist painting. This important canvas resides in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, where it serves as a crucial document of early twentieth-century Italian artistic influence on the Parisian scene. Reflecting its cultural importance and classification within the specified period, high-quality prints of the work are often circulated through public domain archives.