Modigliani painted three outstandingly beautiful pictures of this Algerian sitter. (Of the others both of which are head-and-shoulders portraits – one is in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne, and the other in a private collection in Paris.) In the Courtauld Gallery’s nude, which dates from 1912-13, there is still something left over not only from Modigliani’s Tuscan ancestors but from the pathetisme of 1900-ish painting. In this ‘Almaisa the vision had on the contrary, an admirable candour and directness.

1916