Chagall, Marc (1887-1985)
Bella au col blanc (Bella with White Collar)
1917
Oil on linen, 149 x 72 cm
Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris
The writer Bella Rosenfeld, represented here as a giantess, would be Chagall‘s muse throughout her life. Taking up the layered construction of the celestial and terrestrial registers of religious painting, Marc Chagall gives his wife the features of a monumental Madonna overlooking a tiny world where we distinguish the artist and their daughter Ida. The still cubist treatment of the sky and the forest responds to the sculptural silhouette of Bella. The economy of colors, the excess of this almost heraldic figure and the refusal of depth add to the sacred feeling that emanates from this love hymn. (Centre Pompidou)
See also:
• Rosenfeld, Bella (1889-1944)