Pompeo Borra - Nude (1927)

Title: Nude (or Naked)
Artist: Pompeo Borra (1898-1973)
Date: 1927
Medium: Oil on plywood
Dimensions: 70 x 55 cm
Location: Hermitage museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Photo credit: hermitagemuseum.org

Pompeo Borra’s "Nude" shows a half-length female figure seated behind a plain wooden table, her bare torso emerging from a dense brown background. She faces the viewer with a slight three-quarter turn, arms folded in front of her so that the breasts appear almost like still objects resting above the table edge. On the tabletop lie a small red box and a cigarette, modest props that underline the everyday, domestic setting rather than any mythological or idealized context. A simple gold ring on her finger quietly signals her social status as a married woman.

Borra models the figure with smooth, compact volumes and firm contours that recall sculpture. The color range is narrow—ochres, warm browns, muted flesh tones—creating a heavy, enclosed atmosphere. Light falls from the left, sliding evenly across her shoulders, breasts, and hands and leaving the background in shadow. Her large, dark eyes, slightly widened, and the perfectly outlined lips give her face a doll-like, almost mask-like quality, typical of the cool, constructed realism associated with the Novecento Italiano movement.

The mood is ambiguous: neither overtly erotic nor strictly austere. The woman’s relaxed pose and faint smile suggest intimacy, yet her stillness and the blank space around her introduce a sense of isolation. The cigarette and box hint at modern habits and private rituals, while the ring and the frontal, almost confrontational composition invite us to see her as an individual caught between traditional roles and a new, self-aware modern femininity.