Is the Modigliani Market Ready for a New Authority?

The more than $100 million asking price for an Amedeo Modigliani nude at Art Basel Paris is hard to ignore.

Nu étendu (Lolotte), painted in 1917, is being offered by Pace Di Donna Schrader Galleries (PDS), a secondary-market venture founded by Pace Gallery, Emmanuel Di Donna and David Schrader. It is returning to the market after the owner’s family acquired it from Modigliani’s dealer, Léopold Zborowski, in 1920.

The painting is included in a new six-volume catalogue raisonné of Modigliani, published earlier this year by the scholar Marc Restellini. Restellini’s research also confirmed that the painting featured in Modigliani’s only lifetime solo exhibition, at Galerie Berthe Weill in 1917.

Pace and the Institut Restellini announced a multi-part collaboration in 2025, including symposia and a major exhibition at Pace’s New York gallery in 2027, curated by Restellini. The catalogue itself is distributed by Yale University Press. The partnership raises questions about where art-historical scholarship ends and commercial interest begins, particularly when an artist’s paintings can fetch vast sums. Modigliani’s auction record stands at $170.4m. The stakes are high.

Restellini’s catalogue includes around 100 works not in the previous catalogue, compiled by Ambrogio Ceroni, and excludes 15 that Ceroni had included.

Several catalogues raisonnés of Modigliani have been published, but Ceroni’s had long been the market’s go-to reference. For decades, dealers and collectors have relied on it as a key guide to which paintings are accepted as genuine. Restellini is now challenging that status quo.

Compiling a catalogue raisonné is a painstaking business, and Restellini spent nearly 30 years working on his. These volumes attempt to document an artist’s known works, drawing on provenance, exhibition histories, archival records, stylistic analysis and scientific testing. Restellini’s team used techniques including spectrometry, carbon-14 analysis, infrared and X-ray imaging. The catalogue is not a legal certificate of authenticity, but it can carry enormous influence over whether a painting is accepted by dealers, collectors and auction houses.

For Modigliani, whose work has been extensively forged, authority is particularly important. He died in Paris in 1920, aged just thirty-five. Incomplete provenance records and the difficulty of distinguishing genuine paintings from imitations have complicated the attribution of his work. His distinctive style has proved relatively easy to copy, while conflicting scholarly opinions have fuelled disputes over individual works.

A sale of Nu étendu (Lolotte) in Paris could help establish Restellini’s catalogue as a new authority for collectors, with implications for how Modigliani’s paintings are authenticated and valued. No sale had been publicly reported at the time of writing. Art Basel Paris was due to run until Sunday 25 October, but organisers announced it would close at 7pm on Friday 23 October, cancelling its two public days.

Pace has a clear commercial interest. PDS is offering Lolotte, while Pace’s own 2027 exhibition will be curated by Restellini and feature works included in his catalogue. Earlier this year, Pace cut around 50 members of staff, dropped around 50 artists from its roster and put its Hanover Square gallery in London on the rental market. If collectors accept Restellini’s scholarship, Pace stands to benefit from the interest in the works it presents and sells.

'Jeune Fille aux macarons' by Amedeo Modigliani during Art Basel Paris 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Art Basel

Pace was already putting Restellini’s research to work on the fair circuit before the new catalogue appeared. At Art Basel Paris last year, the gallery sold another Modigliani, Jeune fille aux macarons (1918), for just under $10m. Restellini had newly attributed the painting to Modigliani, and it had not appeared in previous catalogues raisonnés. The sale suggests collectors were already responding to his research.

Earlier this year, at Art Basel Hong Kong, Pace showed Jeune femme brune (1917–18), also included in Restellini’s catalogue, with an asking price of $13.3m. At the time, Pace chief executive Marc Glimcher told reporters that several people were bidding. When I asked the gallery this week whether it had sold, it declined to comment. In my experience, a dealer’s silence is often a sign that a deal hasn’t been done.

Jeune femme brune has a complicated history. It was withdrawn from a Phillips auction in London in 1997 after Restellini challenged its attribution. A New York appellate court later recorded that he had faxed the auction house saying the painting was not, in his view, by Modigliani and would not be included in the catalogue he was preparing.

The painting’s then-owner, collector Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian, sued dealer Daniel Wildenstein and the Wildenstein Institute, alleging interference with his commercial interests. A New York appellate court dismissed the case in 2001 for lack of jurisdiction; it did not rule on the painting’s authenticity. Restellini says he never called the work a fake, only that he couldn’t properly assess it without seeing it in person.

Years later, after examining the work, Restellini says scientific tests and archival research supported its authenticity. Pigment tests, he says, matched those in two other authenticated Modigliani paintings, while archival research linked it to a 1929 exhibition at London’s Leicester Galleries. He included it in his new catalogue. Quite a turnaround.

PDS offered another Modigliani, La Bouquetière (1919–20), at Art Basel in Switzerland in June, but the gallery would not confirm to me if it sold. The painting was newly attributed by Restellini.

'La Bouquetière' (1919–20) by Amedeo Modigliani. Photo: Marc Restellini / Institut Restellini, courtesy of Art Basel

Owners whose paintings are included in his catalogue will have reason to celebrate. Inclusion can provide a powerful scholarly endorsement. Exclusion, on the other hand, can raise uncomfortable questions about a painting’s status and potentially affect its marketability.

A catalogue raisonné is not a price list, and inclusion doesn’t guarantee a sale. But in a market where buyers are extremely cautious, it carries considerable weight.

The Shaltiel case was not the last dispute over Restellini’s research. In 2020, he sued the Wildenstein Plattner Institute (WPI), alleging copyright infringement and misappropriation of trade secrets. He claimed it was retaining thousands of pages of his research and intended to make the material available without his permission.

WPI disputed his account, arguing that its predecessor, the Wildenstein Institute, had contributed substantial research and provenance work to the project. It filed counterclaims against Restellini and his institute; a federal judge dismissed those counterclaims in September 2021.

The dispute continued for several years. In February 2025, the parties told the court they were close to a settlement. The Art Newspaper later reported that the case had settled and that Restellini had been provided with the research.

The case also raised a question beyond which paintings are genuine: who owns the research, and who has the right to publish it?

In March, Glimcher reportedly said he planned to present a newly attributed Modigliani at each art fair Pace attended this year. Pace is due to exhibit at two more fairs, including Frieze Abu Dhabi and Art Basel Miami Beach. So expect more Modiglianis endorsed by Restellini.

Pace is betting that collectors will buy into Restellini’s scholarship. If they do, his catalogue will gain authority, and the value of the paintings it endorses could rise with it.

The question is whether the market is ready to embrace his catalogue as the new benchmark, and how much that shift could be worth.