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Modigliani in 1919, near the end of his life,

Top 10 Unknown Facts about Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani is most known as a painter, but before his death at the age of thirty-five, he also made outstanding sculptures and drawings. However, his turbulent life and early death, as well as the subsequent suicide of his young fiancée, Jeanne Hébuterne, have tended to overshadow his major artistic achievement.

However here are the top 10 unknown facts about Amedeo Modigliani

1. His birth saved his family

 Amedeo Modigliani was in Livorno, Italy, at the time. His father, an Italian Jewish businessman, had recently declared bankruptcy at the time of his birth. It is reported that Modigliani’s birth rescued the family from ruin because it occurred on the same day that creditors arrived to seize all of their assets, but due to an ancient law, creditors were not allowed to take the bed of a lady in labor, so the family placed their most important belongings on top of her.

2. He has suffered health problems throughout his life

 Modigliani struggled with health issues throughout his life, beginning as a child. He got pleurisy when he was 11 and typhoid fever a year later. By the age of 16, he had contracted tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him.

3. He is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age and thought himself “already a painter”

Photograph of Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) in his studio rue de la Grande-Chaumière, at Montparnasse.

He is believed to have begun drawing and painting as a child, and his love of art was underlined when, after a bout of typhoid disease, he began screaming about seeing the old master paintings of Florence during a fever-induced psychosis. His mother promised to take him to see the paintings once he healed, which she eventually did.

4. His first love was a Russian Poet

In 1910, at the age of 26, he met his first serious love, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. They shared studio space in the same building, and despite Anna’s recent marriage, they began an affair.  Anna was tall and dark-haired, with pale skin and grey-green eyes: she embodied Modigliani’s aesthetic ideal, and the two became immersed in each other. Anna, on the other hand, returned to her husband after a year. 

5. He was influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and  Paul Cézanne

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was his first inspiration, but around 1907 he got obsessed with Paul Cézanne’s art. He eventually created his distinct style, which cannot be appropriately classified with that of other artists.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator who immersed himself in the colorful and theatrical life of Â鶹APP in the late nineteenth century, resulting in a collection of enticing, elegant, and provocative images of the times’ sometimes decadent affairs. While Paul Cézanne was a French painter and Post-Impressionist whose work established the groundwork for the transition from a 19th-century vision of artistic endeavor to a new and profoundly different world of art in the twentieth century.

6. There are two films that have been made about Modigliani

Modigliani has been the subject of two films: Les Amants de Montparnasse (1958), directed by Jacques Becker and starring Gérard Philipe as Modigliani, and Modigliani (2004), directed by Mick Davis and featuring Andy Garcia as Modigliani. Johnny Depp was planning to direct the film about Modigliani in August 2022, which he will co-produce with Al Pacino and Barry Navidi, based on a screenplay by Jerzy and Mary Kromolowski. The principal photography will begin in 2023. 

7. He is the most imitated artist

Modigliani is one of the world’s most mimicked artists. Rising prices for works attributed to him, as well as the legend surrounding his brief life, have fostered a market for forgeries of both paintings and sculptures. Students created three stone heads in the style of Modigliani in 1984, causing a commotion when they were discovered in a canal in Livorno, Italy, so eager many believed the skulls were legitimate, but the students had recorded themselves building the heads with a Black & Decker drill. Twenty fake Modiglianis were confiscated during a Genoa show in 2018. 

8. A painting of a nude by Amedeo Modigliani,  sold for more than $68.9m (£42.7m) at an auction in New York—a record for the artist’s work

Nu Couché au coussin Bleu, one of the finest examples of reclining nudes by Modigliani, 1916, By Amedeo Modigliani –

In November 2010, a painting of a naked woman by Amedeo Modigliani sold for more than $68.9 million (£42.7 million) at an auction in New York, setting a record for the artist’s artwork. Bidding for La Belle Romaine exceeded its $40 million (£24.8 million) forecast. Modigliani’s previous auction record was 43.2 million euros (£35.8 million), set in Â鶹APP in 2010. Another work by the artist, Jeanne Hébuterne (au chapeau), one of his first portraits of his beloved, went for $19.1 million (£11.8 million), far exceeding its pre-sale estimate of $9-12 million (£5.6-7.4 million). 

9. The 1917 artwork was the most expensive auction

The 1917 artwork Nu couché was sold at Christie’s in New York for US$170.4 million on November 9, 2015.  The 1917 artwork Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) sold for $157.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York on May 14, 2018. This was the most expensive auction in Sotheby’s history. 

10. The Modigliani estate is one of the most problematic in the art world

Four sculptures by Modigliani were exhibited at the 1912 Salon d’Automne along with the Cubists, Wikipedia

 Many of Modigliani’s masterpieces are now lost. Much of the artist’s early work was destroyed by him, who saw it as immature and the result of his prior life as a “filthy bourgeois.” Other pieces were left behind during his repeated relocations, and others were donated to a variety of love interests who did not maintain them.

At least five catalogs raisonnés of the artist’s work exist, including two volumes by Ambrogio Ceroni, which were last updated in 1972. The works of Arthur Pfannstiel (1929 and 1956) and Joseph Lanthemann (1970) are frequently rejected nowadays. Osvaldo Patani, a Milanese researcher, released three volumes: paintings (1991), drawings (1992), and one on the Paul Alexandre period (1994), while Christian Â鶹APPot published Volumes I, II, and IV of a catalog raisonné (in 1970, 1971, and 1996), respectively.