Institut Restellini’s long-awaited Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonné is set to arrive next month, closing a research effort that has stretched for more than four decades and reopening one of the market’s most sensitive questions: what, exactly, counts as a Modigliani.
The multi-volume project, produced by the Institut Restellini under the direction of Marc Restellini, is expected to carry immediate consequences for scholarship and for the trade in Modigliani’s paintings and works on paper, where authentication disputes have long shaped both reputations and prices. One recent benchmark underscores the stakes: “Pace” sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2023 for $34.8 million.
Restellini has framed the publication as a corrective to the way contested works can be sidelined when they fall outside earlier reference books. “It is important for Modigliani’s legacy that some paintings that have been rejected — or effectively boycotted — are recognized as Modigliani when the evidence supports it,” he said. “It is not our right to say that a painting is not authentic simply because it does not appear in one book or another. If we have all the information about a painting, and the evidence leads us to conclude that it is genuine, then it should be recognized as such.”
He also emphasized a point that can be uncomfortable in a market that often equates quality with authenticity: unevenness is part of any artist’s output. “We found some masterpieces that were incredible. But we have also authenticated some paintings that are not so beautiful,” Restellini said. “Sometimes, with an ugly painting, you have people who deny it’s authentic just because of how it looks. But, like every artist, Modigliani made good and bad works.”
The catalogue’s release will be accompanied by a Modigliani symposium at Pace, structured as a series of panels focused on catalogues raisonnés and the evolving tools used to build them. The program brings together specialists from across the field, including Ekaterina Bembel, president of La Société Internationale des Catalogues Raisonnés; Satoko Tanimoto, senior research scientist at Scientific Analysis of Fine Art in New York; Tiffany Bell, editor of the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné; and David Grosz, editorial director and chief digital officer of Cahiers d’Art, among others.
While catalogues raisonnés are often treated as definitive, their authority is built through a mix of archival research, provenance reconstruction, connoisseurship, and, increasingly, scientific analysis. For artists with complicated histories of attribution and a high incidence of disputed works, a new catalogue can shift the center of gravity: it can consolidate consensus, challenge entrenched opinions, and, in some cases, reintroduce works that have lived in the shadows of uncertainty.
For Modigliani, whose short career and posthumous fame have produced a dense thicket of claims and counterclaims, the publication is poised to become a major reference point. Whether it settles debates or sparks new ones, the catalogue’s arrival signals a renewed push to align the artist’s legacy with the fullest available evidence — even when that evidence leads to uncomfortable conclusions about taste, value, and the limits of prior scholarship.
