{"id":530722,"date":"2026-04-14T18:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T18:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530722\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T18:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T18:12:11","slug":"marc-restellinis-atom-bomb-of-a-modigliani-catalogue-raisonne-is-finally-published-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530722\/","title":{"rendered":"Marc Restellini\u2019s \u2018atom bomb\u2019 of a Modigliani catalogue raisonn\u00e9 is finally published – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

After almost 30 years, several legal battles and a few death threats<\/a>, Marc Restellini\u2019s catalogue raisonn\u00e9 of Amedeo Modigliani\u2019s oil paintings is finally published today (14 April) by the art historian and curator\u2019s Institut Restellini, distributed by Yale University Press. <\/p>\n

At six hefty volumes\u2014and a \u00a32,000 price tag\u2014the catalogue took seven people three months to proofread each volume. It includes 100 newly authenticated works, half of which are in museums, and has removed 15 others \u201cdue to lack of definitive evidence attributing them solely to the artist\u201d\u2014or simply because they could not be located for analysis.<\/p>\n

Restellini\u2019s methodology is forensic, with each work subjected to scientific analysis (including spectrometry, carbon-14, infrared and x-ray imaging) cross-referenced against archival documentary evidence and stylistic analysis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Inside the book, which details the documentary, stylistic and scientific\u00a0analysis each painting underwent <\/p>\n

Courtesy of Yale University Press<\/p>\n

\u201cAs with any catalogue raisonn\u00e9, this work grapples with the unbridgeable distance between the aspiration to total exhaustiveness and the practical limitations that make this goal nearly impossible to achieve\u201d, writes Restellini when setting out his methodology in the first volume. \u201cClose to 15 paintings, at least, are known to exist that could have been included but, for various reasons, were not.\u201d Restellini adds: \u201cPaintings that have been declared questionable in previous trustworthy publications have been left out for now.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those that have been left out, the impact on their value is likely to be huge. But, in an interview with The Art Newspaper, Restellini says that if a work is not included, it does not necessarily mean he thinks it is a fake. Nor is his sole opinion the ultimate arbiter. \u201cIt is not a job where I decide what is good, what is not,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not alone; I have a team. I just receive all the information that they collect\u2014scientific, historic, archivistic, stylistic. It\u2019s this information that finally decides if a painting is included or not. It\u2019s not really my\u00a0opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fact, not opinion<\/p>\n

This distinction is important, Restellini says, because when he started writing, \u201cit was the time of the catalogue raisonn\u00e9 being written by the expert, the \u2018king-maker\u2019 saying this one is good, this one is not, with no reasons given.\u201d He adds: \u201cAn authenticity for a painting is not an opinion. A painting is genuine or fake. It\u2019s a fact, not an opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restellini is well aware of how incendiary this book could be. Speaking<\/a> to The Art Newspaper in 2012\u2014for an article reporting that its publication had been delayed from 2006\u2014Restellini said: \u201cThere are people who don\u2019t want my catalogue to appear. It is going to be an atom bomb\u201d. <\/p>\n

(A fuller account of past controversies surrounding Restellini’s catalogue raisonn\u00e9 can be found at the end of this article.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nu couch\u00e9 (1919) is one of 421 oil paintings included in the catalogue raisonn\u00e9<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Marc Restellini\/Institut Restellini<\/p>\n

No wonder. The Modigliani world has long been one of warring experts, and fakes are rife. The artist died young\u2014at 35 in 1920 of tuberculosis\u2014leaving behind no memoirs, inventories or records of his work, nor an estate to protect his legacy. This has made him fertile ground for forgers, and the number of fakes in circulation is \u201cstriking\u201d, writes Restellini, with trade in counterfeits dating back to soon after his death. (The notorious forger Elmyr de Hory was churning out \u201cModiglianis\u201d in the US in the 1950s and 1960s, many of which are still at large.)<\/p>\n

Part of the reason fakes\u2014and lawsuits\u2014are rife is because the financial stakes are so high. Two nudes by Modigliani are among the most valuable works ever to sell at auction: Nu couch\u00e9 (1917-18) at Christie\u2019s for $170.4m (with fees) in 2015 and Nu couch\u00e9 (sur le c\u00f4t\u00e9 gauche) (1917) at Sotheby\u2019s for $157.2m (with fees) in 2018.<\/p>\n

And yet despite these prices, auction houses and other art market professionals have so far relied on a half-century-old catalogue raisonn\u00e9 by the Italian scholar Ambrogio Ceroni, last updated in 1972 and well known to have its gaps. (Ceroni only included works that he saw in person.) Restellini dismisses this work in volume one of his catalogue, writing that \u201cfor lack of a better option, art historians and art market professionals have long preferred to settle for the lesser of evils: Ceroni\u2019s \u2018incomplete\u2019 catalogue.\u201d Ceroni has become \u201ctruly obsolete over\u00a0time\u201d, Restellini argues in the text, frustrated that the number of recognised Modiglianis has been \u201cfrozen\u201d at the 337 Ceroni included. Restellini\u2019s own catalogue includes 421 (plus three addenda).<\/p>\n

Scientific results<\/p>\n

It was the Parisian art dealer Daniel Wildenstein who persuaded Restellini to write a new Modigliani catalogue raisonn\u00e9 in the late 1990s. \u201cI was reluctant, because I knew it would not be easy, and it was a really big task.\u201d He laughs wryly. \u201cI was not wrong!\u201d. But in 1997 Restellini agreed, with Wildenstein providing finance and an office at the Wildenstein Institute in Paris. Following Wildenstein\u2019s death in 2001, Restellini stayed at the institute until 2015, when he moved his research to his own Institut Restellini, which has since financed the catalogue project through fees charged for authentication work and organising exhibitions worldwide.<\/p>\n

The first step was to establish a database of scientific results drawn from a group of authentic \u201cbenchmark\u201d works. Restellini was able to do this by working with the collections of Jonas Netter and Paul Alexandre, two key Modigliani collectors who bought from the artist. These paintings also provided the bedrock for stylistic comparisons. Since 1997, \u201cevery painting selected for this catalogue raisonn\u00e9 has undergone the same methodology: a triple evaluation (documentary, stylistic and scientific) against the \u2018benchmark\u2019 corpus,\u201d Restellini writes. \u201cThe results of this threefold assessment were then interpreted and further informed by my connoisseurship, enabling choices to be made in cases of conflicting results or incomplete data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Past controversies: from withheld research to obstructive owners<\/p>\n

The journey to publication has been tumultuous from the start, and Marc Restellini has attracted ample controversy\u2014death threats after refusing to authenticate works, spats with other experts, several lawsuits.<\/p>\n

Knowledge is power, particularly when its application has the ability to make or break the value of a work. This was at the crux of a lawsuit brought by Restellini in 2020 against the US-based Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI), a separate entity to the Wildenstein Institute (WI) but to which the latter\u2019s archives, including the Modigliani material, passed in 2017. Restellini sued the WPI, claiming it was holding his research \u201chostage\u201d. The WPI, which threatened to publish the research online for free, shot back that Restellini \u201chopes to create monopoly power for himself over historical information about Modigliani, which Restellini further plans to leverage for his own, maximum profit\u201d. A judge dismissed the WPI\u2019s counterclaim accusing Restellini of copyright infringement in 2021. Eventually the parties settled, and Restellini was provided with the research.<\/p>\n

Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Restellini says some of the work omitted simply could not be located: \u201cThis was mainly the issue we had. There are very few paintings, maximum two, which are problematic for sure.\u201d He declines to name them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people who don\u2019t want my catalogue to appear. <\/p>\n

Marc Restellini<\/p>\n

Restellini also declines to give details of the paintings he could not locate. \u201cWe know they existed, but we don\u2019t know what happened to them\u2014maybe they were stolen, or destroyed,\u201d Restellini says. \u201cWe have to be extremely prudent. We don\u2019t put old photos, usually in black and white, of these lost paintings in the catalogues, because in the past a forger has seen old black-and-white-pictures, then copied them.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the works omitted, Portrait of Beatrice Hastings Seated (1915), was used as evidence in Restellini\u2019s 2020 lawsuit against the WPI to point out the flaws in Ceroni\u2019s catalogue, which had included the work. Restellini claimed the work had been significantly altered between its completion in 1915 and when it first came up for sale at Christie\u2019s in 1997 (where it was sold again in 2019), something which was not mentioned by Ceroni. \u201cI asked to see the painting and was refused,\u201d Restellini says. \u201cAll we know is that until 1957 the painting was in its former condition, then suddenly it\u2019s changed, it has been finished. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s fake, but if the owners don\u2019t give me access to the paintings, there is no way to know what has happened to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next year at Pace New York, Restellini will organise an exhibition of paintings in museum collections that were not in Ceroni\u2019s catalogue but have been accepted into his. The exhibition is part of a larger collaboration with the gallery with which Restellini is also hosting a symposium in New York on 30 April, titled \u201cReimagining the catalogue raisonn\u00e9\u201d.<\/p>\n

So, does Restellini think his will topple Ceroni\u2019s as the pre-eminent catalogue raisonn\u00e9 for Modigliani? \u201cThis is not for me to say. What I can say is that I have done my best to make the best catalogue possible with a methodology I believe in and will defend.\u201d He pauses. \u201cWe have used the best way to make as sure as possible that there are no fakes in this catalogue. That\u2019s all I can say.\u201d Next, Restellini will turn to Modigliani\u2019s drawings\u2014an even greater minefield of fakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After almost 30 years, several legal battles and a few death threats, Marc Restellini\u2019s catalogue raisonn\u00e9 of Amedeo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[87205,10346,6225,6485,6486,457,183762,183761,1120,96,27617,183760,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-530722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-amedeo-modigliani","tag-art-market","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-books","tag-catalogue-raisonne","tag-catalogues-raisonnes","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-lawsuits","tag-marc-restellini","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}