{"id":934318,"date":"2026-05-03T04:50:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T04:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/934318\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T04:50:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T04:50:20","slug":"death-threats-and-bribes-for-the-man-who-mastered-modigliani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/934318\/","title":{"rendered":"Death threats and bribes for the man who mastered Modigliani"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amedeo Modigliani had a highly productive but short and wild life, dying in 1920 aged just 35 \u2014 followed two days later by Jeanne H\u00e9buterne, his grieving muse, who threw herself out of the window of their fifth-floor Paris flat while eight months pregnant with their second child.<\/p>\n

The market for the artist\u2019s work has been just as turbulent. Two of his most celebrated female nudes,\u00a0Nu couch\u00e9\u00a0and\u00a0Nu couch\u00e9 (sur le c\u00f4t\u00e9 gauche), have sold for $170.4 million and $157.2 million respectively in recent years, catapulting Modigliani into the same financial league as Picasso, Klimt and Monet.<\/p>\n

\"IllustrationNu couch\u00e9 and, below, Nu couch\u00e9 (sur le c\u00f4t\u00e9 gauche)Marc Restellini\/Institut Restellini<\/p>\n

\"AmedeoANTHONY WALLACE\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yet he left no behind no official inventory and with no wife nor estate to police his work, fakes have long been rife. A high-profile exhibition in Genoa closed in 2017 after authorities claimed the majority of the paintings on display were not genuine.<\/p>\n

Marc Restellini, 61, a Paris-based expert on Modigliani, is attempting to bring some clarity in\u00a0a market that he says has become \u201ca complete mess\u201d. After an extraordinary 30 years of work, involving a team of up to a dozen people, he has just published a 2,000-page multi-volume\u00a0catalogue raison\u00e9,\u00a0which promises to be the most definitive compilation of the artist\u2019s output. <\/p>\n

In the process of analysing more than 1,200 works he has braved several death threats and attempts at bribery from those determined that their own \u201cModigliani\u201d be deemed genuine.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is truly an artist who arouses deep passions,\u201d Restellini said last week in Paris of the man who has dominated decades of his life. \u201cHe is an alluring figure, someone who produced beautiful paintings and who had a biography that moves you to tears. His life was like a novel. When it comes to enthusiasm for his art, he ticks all the boxes, whether for the general public or the market.\u201d The academic and museum communities \u201cwhich had long been rather dismissive\u201d of the artist\u2019s work, had also recently finally come to appreciate it, he added. <\/p>\n

Born in 1884 in Livorno into a family of Sephardic Jews, Modigliani moved in 1906 to Paris, home of the avant-garde. Mixing with fellow artist such as Picasso and Constantin Brancusi in the bohemian Montparnasse district, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol. From an early age he had suffered from multiple health problems and he succumbed to tubercular meningitis at the height of his career.<\/p>\n

\"AmedeoModigliani, Pablo Picasso and the poet and critic Andr\u00e9 Salmon in 1916Alamy<\/p>\n

Restellini\u2019s catalogue is the sixth and by far most thorough attempt to document Modigliani\u2019s work. The first, by Arthur Pfannstiel, a German expert, appeared in 1929, by which time the artist\u2019s paintings were already selling for the modern day equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was then updated in 1956. \u201cThe first was fine but the second was full of fakes,\u201d said Restellini. \u201cAnd Pfannstiel was a really bad guy and a Nazi spy.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pfannstiel was also a member of the commision headed by Alfred Rosenberg, a high-ranking Nazi, that stole the cultural heritage of France and other countries. \u201cModigliani, the Jewish painter from Livorno and a brilliant Kabbalist, had as his first art cataloguer a Nazi who plundered Jewish collections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And so it went on. Conflicts of interest were rife as those who authenticated works also often simultaneously dealt in them \u2014 something Restellini has always avoided.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe specific features that make up Amedeo Modigliani\u2019s pictorial language are utterly distinctive. So when you are faced with a forgery, you tend to spot it very quick,\u201d Restellini said. \u201cThe problem is a number of individuals, who are not especially scrupulous, who have authenticated and certified fake works. This has thoroughly polluted the market, which in the past 30, 40 or 50 years has turned into a complete mess. I am trying to clear it up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restellini\u2019s involvement began in the late 1990s. Already a leading expert on Modigliani, he was commissioned by Daniel Wildenstein, a wealthy art dealer and collector, to produce a new catalogue for his work. The most recent, produced by Ambrogio Ceroni, an Italian scholar, had not been updated since 1972 and was known for his gaps.<\/p>\n

Restellini then embarked on what he knew would be an enormous task, latterly carried out by his own institute after parting with Wildenstein\u2019s heirs following his death. Unlike his predecessors, he did not reply on his own subjective sense of whether a painting was genuine.<\/p>\n

\"AmedeoModigliani and Jeanne H\u00e9buterneAlamy<\/p>\n

Stylistic analysis was instead coupled with rigorous examination of the documentation accompanying each work and the scientific study of canvas, pigment and paints, using carbon 14 dating, x-ray imaging, spectrometry and other such analytical techniques. Opinion was to be replaced by fact.<\/p>\n

By the time Restellini had finished, he had approved 424 works, compared with Ceroni\u2019s 337. The difference was accounted for largely by the addition of almost 100 new works, though a dozen or so that had been approved by Ceroni did not make the cut.<\/p>\n

Restellini hopes his revolutionary method \u2014 which he previously said could have \u201can atom bomb\u201d effect on the art world \u2014 will now be adopted by experts to analyse the work of other artists. <\/p>\n

The long and laboured process of authentication was financed in part by charging people who brought their painting to his laboratory in Geneva to be verified: the Swiss franc 38,000 (\u00a335,750) fee is the same whatever the result. \u201cIt\u2019s still the same amount of<\/strong> work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Given the huge value of genuine works, the amounts at stake for owners and dealers alike are massive \u2014 and there are predictable consequences. Of the 21 works attributed to Modigliani at the 2017 show at Genoa\u2019s Ducal Palace, which was raided by carabinieri three days before it was closed, 20 were later confirmed as fakes and there were questions about the authenticity of the 21st.<\/p>\n

\"PaintingA fake Modigliani<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, while compiling his catalogue, Restellini has had to deal with attempts to influence his work. He recalls how twenty years or so ago, his mother received a large unsolicited cheque through the post with instructions to give it to her son to make the \u201cright decision\u201d about a work purportedly by Modigliani. \u201cIt was for \u20ac50[000] or \u20ac100,000,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI sent it to my lawyer and instructed him to take legal action. That is called corruption. I think my lawyer still has the cheque since the complaint could not be resolved.\u201d He suggested to his mother that she have herself removed from the telephone book.<\/p>\n

Restellini has received other such offers all of which he has declined. \u201cOne man invited me to his house in Mexico. Another wanted to send his jet to fly me to Las Vegas. I told him to use it to bring the picture to Paris for examination.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have also been plenty of death threats, the most recent of which in 2018. \u201cI received an email in English saying they were planning my death and gave me a number to call,\u201d he said.\u00a0 Instead he rang the police. On an earlier occasion, a request he sent for more information about a painting with a threat to kill him if he did not include it in his catalogue. In the end, they simply provided the details required and all was fine.<\/p>\n

For the moment, Restellini is travelling the world publicising his catalogue, but is far from done with Modigliani. He is writing a monograph on the artist and has begun to catalogue his sculptures. His team will then turn to his drawings. \u201cThere is another 40 years of work,\u201d he said. It is something of a family enterprise, including Hadrien, his son.<\/p>\n

I wonder whether, after dedicating such a chunk of his life to the artist he still enjoys his work and maybe has a Modigliani or two on his wall at home. He laughs at the absurdity of the question. \u201cUnfortunately no, I like his work a lot,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the cheapest would cost millions. If I had that money, I would use it instead to buy an apartment. I have a lot of paintings on my walls and I don\u2019t think a cataloguer\u2019s job is to buy works by the painter they\u2019re studying.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amedeo Modigliani had a highly productive but short and wild life, dying in 1920 aged just 35 \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-934318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116508847745332769","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}