Rosalia Tobia

Rosalia Tobia (Picinisco, 1860 – Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1932), known as Rosalie, was an Italian model and cook active in France.

She is best known as the founder of the restaurant Chez Rosalie, which became a meeting place for the artists of Montparnasse from the 1910s to the late 1920s.

Biography Originally from the Ciociaria area, Rosalia Tobia was born in Picinisco in 1860. In 1887 she arrived in Paris as a maid in the service of Princess Ruspoli. The interior of Chez Rosalie in a photograph from 1918–1919. Sometime between 1906 and 1912, having left her career as an artist’s model, Rosalia opened a restaurant in Montparnasse, Chez Rosalie. This small bistro, located in rue Campagne-Première , served traditional Italian food and was frequented mainly by the construction workers employed on the nearby building sites, at a time when Paris was beginning to expand rapidly. She was assisted in running the establishment by her son Luigi. Modigliani began to frequent Rosalia Tobia’s establishment regularly, often giving her some of his drawings when he did not have enough money to pay for a meal. Rosalia, however, was unable to appreciate Modigliani’s modernist art, which was very different from the academic style she had known in her youth. It is believed that many of these “scribbles” (as she called them) were used to light the kitchen stoves or were stored in a cellar, where they were gnawed by mice. as well as the model Alice Prin, better known as Kiki de Montparnasse.

Between 1929 and 1930 Rosalia closed her restaurant and moved to the south of France, near Cannes, to a rural area that reminded her of her native homeland. She died two years later, in 1932, in Cagnes‑sur‑Mer, where she was also buried.