Standing nude (Vénus)

Identification

Published titles

English: Standing nude.
French: Vénus; Nu debout; Nu Médicis.
Italian: Venere.

Date

1917. Werner 1985 dates the work 1918.

Medium

Oil on canvas.

Dimensions

99.5 × 84.5 cm. Patani: 100 × 65 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at top right in white.

Present location

Private collection?

Catalogue numbers

Legal note on MR: This investigation has not had access to MR’s catalogue raisonné; all research here is based on open sources, publications and exhibitions. By no means has that catalogue been copied at any point. Modigliani Project and Modigliani Initiative are marked YES when the work is published or otherwise recorded by those projects, even if no catalogue number is assigned; otherwise the field is marked ?.

Provenance

1. Léopold Zborowski, Paris.
2. Berthe Weill, Paris (unconfirmed).
3. Netter Collection, Paris.
4. Perls Galleries, New York (by 1966).
5. Galerie de l’Élysée, Paris.
6. Private collection, France.
7. Sale, Christie’s, New York, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale, 8 November 2006, sale 1722, lot 31 (estimate USD 6,000,000–9,000,000; sold USD 15,920,000). The sale note recorded a request for Tokyo and Osaka, 2007; this investigation states the work was not shown there.
8. Private collection.

The sequence follows the published museum, sale, and catalogue record in this investigation. Gaps and uncertain transfers are marked as such.

Selected bibliography

Book-length publications are marked with a footnote giving a full citation. Exhibition catalogues appear in both this list and the exhibition list when this investigation recorded them in both places. Where this investigation listed a long run of secondary mentions, only the principal catalogues and museum or sale references are retained here.

• Raffaello Franchi, Modigliani, Florence, 1944, pl. 14.
• Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, 1970, no. 189 (dated 1917).¹
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 193.²
• Alfred Werner, 1985, pl. 14 (dated 1918; Perls Galleries).
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 193 (100 × 65 cm; titled Nudo in piedi (Venere)).³
• Nancy Ireson and Simonetta Fraquelli, 2017, p. 142.⁴

Exhibitions

• Paris, Berthe Weill Gallery, 1917 (unconfirmed).
• Brussels, Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1933, no. 29 (unconfirmed).
• Basel, Kunsthalle, 1934 (unconfirmed).
• Paris, Galerie de France, 1945–46, no. 11.
• Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cent tableaux de Modigliani, 1958, no. 85, as Venus (100 × 64.5 cm).
• New York, Perls Galleries, The Nudes of Modigliani, 1966, no. 4.
• New York, Gagosian Gallery, From Modigliani to Currin, 2016.
• London, Tate Modern, 2017–18.

Notes

D’Atri papers no. 29, dated end of 1917, titled Nu Médicis, size 100 × 65 cm, Netter Collection.

This investigation notes that published photographs do not readily convey the hair colour, described there as almost ginger.

This investigation marked several fields as still being checked. The facts above are those already published; where sources disagree, both readings are given.