Simultaneously abstracted and erotically detailed, they exhibit a formal grace referencing nude figures of the Italian Renaissance while at the same time objectifying their subjects' sexuality; they "exemplify his position between tradition and modernism".

Yet the uniformly thick, rough application of paint— as if applied by a sculptor's hand— is more concerned with mass and the visceral perception of the female body than with titillation and the re-creation of translucent, tactile flesh".

[3] This series of nudes was commissioned by Modigliani's dealer and friend Leopold Zborowski, who lent the artist use of his apartment, supplied models and painting materials, and paid him between fifteen and twenty francs each day for his work.

[5] The Paris show of 1917 was Modigliani's only solo exhibition during his life, and is "notorious" in modern art history for its sensational public reception and the attendant issues of obscenity.

[6] According to the catalogue description from the 2010 sale at Sotheby's, seven nudes were exhibited in the 1917 show, four of them titled Nu; "the present work may have been among these pictures.... the models' permissiveness and the artist's accessibility to them implied that these oils were post coital-renderings, the women still flush and basking in the afterglow".