Modigliani’s Market Just Got a New Reference Point — and It May Reshape Attribution
After nearly three decades of research, disputes, and threats, Marc Restellini’s six-volume catalogue raisonné of Amedeo Modigliani’s oil paintings has been published by Institut Restellini and distributed by Yale University Press. Released on April 14, the set arrives with a £2,000 price tag and a claim that will reverberate through the market: 100 newly authenticated works, about half of them in museums, and 15 works removed from the artist’s accepted corpus.
The project began in 1997, after Daniel Wildenstein persuaded Restellini to take it on. Since then, the art historian and curator has built his case through a forensic process that combines spectrometry, carbon-14 testing, infrared and x-ray imaging with archival documentation and stylistic comparison. In the first volume, Restellini acknowledges the limits of any catalogue raisonné, writing that the ambition of total completeness collides with practical reality. He also notes that close to 15 paintings known to exist could not be included for various reasons.
The implications are likely to be significant. Works excluded from the catalogue may face immediate pressure in a market where attribution can determine value, liquidity, and legal exposure. Restellini, however, has been careful to frame the book as an evidentiary project rather than a personal verdict. In his view, authenticity is not a matter of taste or authority, but of accumulated proof gathered by a team.
That position challenges an older model of connoisseurship, in which a single expert could effectively act as final arbiter. It also places Restellini in direct conversation with the long-dominant catalogue by Ambrogio Ceroni, last updated in 1972. Ceroni listed 337 works and included only paintings he had examined in person. Restellini’s new catalogue expands the field to 421 works plus three addenda.
The stakes around Modigliani have always been unusually high. The artist died in 1920 at age 35, leaving no memoirs, inventories, or estate to stabilize his legacy. That vacuum helped make his work a target for forgers, from Elmyr de Hory’s postwar “Modiglianis” to the lawsuits that continue to shadow the market. Two nudes by Modigliani remain among the most expensive works ever sold at auction: “Nu couché” brought $170.4 million at Christie’s in 2015, and “Nu couché (sur le côté gauche)” sold for $157.2 million at Sotheby’s in 2018.
For collectors, museums, and dealers, Restellini’s publication is more than a scholarly milestone. It is a recalibration of one of the most contested bodies of work in modern art, and a reminder that in the Modigliani market, attribution is never merely academic.
