Portrait of Leopold Zborowski 1917

Amedeo Modigliani painted Leopold Zborowski with oils, somewhere, sometime. I love the muddy palette. Earthy, fleshy. Raw sienna, burnt umber, a dash of red. You can almost smell the linseed oil and turpentine. Look at how the head emerges, tilting forward on the dark background. Modigliani is like, ‘I’m gonna pull you out of the darkness, Zborowski, and make you solid.’ Zborowski’s got that serious gaze. But his eyes are like almonds, right? Slanted, not quite meeting your own. Modigliani paints the tie like a nervous accident. The white of the shirt is all ‘nervous brushstrokes’. He makes the painting come alive, kind of like those Cezanne portraits with their wonky perspective. This feels like Modigliani’s saying that painting is a conversation between himself, Zborowski, and all the other painters. How did they see, how did they feel?