Mme Zborowska

Identification

Published titles

English: Mme Zborowska.

Date

1917?

Medium

Oil on canvas?

Dimensions

54.5 × 37 cm.

Signature

Signed modigliani at bottom left. Inscribed on the reverse: Modigliani. / 3. Joseph Bara. / Paris.

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. Hôtel Drouot, Paris, sale 6 May 1932, lot 104.
3. Pospisil Collection, Florence.
4. Renzo Camerino, Venice.
5. Pasquinelli 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, Arnaud, 1944, pl. 20; 1946, pl. 20.
• Joseph Lanthemann, 1970, no. 203.¹
• Osvaldo Patani, 1991–94, no. 185.²
• Christian Parisot, A. Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne e gli artisti di Montmartre e Montparnasse, Milan, Maiocchi, 2003, pp. 114–15, 148–49.
• Christian Parisot, Modigliani: la vita, le opere, Rome, Carte Segrete / Musée du Montparnasse, 2006, no. 28.

Exhibitions

• Florence, Mostra della pittura francese, 1945, no. 150.
• Milan, 1946, no. 12; Rome, 1950, no. 22.
• Milan, Palazzo Reale, Mostra di Amedeo Modigliani, curated by Franco Russoli, 1958, no. 30.
• Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, 1959, no. 17.
• Barcelona and Madrid, curated by Christian Parisot, 1983.
• Barcelona, 2002; Bari, Castello Svevo, 2003; Caserta, 2003 (Parisot).
• Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, Modigliani, 2017, no. 45.

Notes

This investigation marks the work as not located in the D’Atri papers.

The painting was among works shown at Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, 2017, no. 45. It was seized by the police after a report by C. Pepi.

Published conclusion of Prof. Isabella Quattrocchi (as printed in this investigation): despite a long exhibition history and a 30 March 1972 notification by the Ministry of Public Education, the work is “grossly false.” Six points are listed: an “inexplicable diagonal” of the portrait on the support; rigid features drawn in ivory black and carbon black “used until the end of the 1800s”; an “unusual terracotta” complexion; a ground “divided without pictorial logic”; copper threads in the weave; and a “formless” signature at bottom left described as false.

This investigation records that at a later stage the judicial authorities determined the report to be inconsistent and that the work was returned to the owner.

These statements are reported as published facts from the investigation and the subsequent court decision. No independent conclusion is added here.

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