Allegory of Life
Oil on wood/furniture — 1898?
Identification
- Title
- English: Allegory of life.
- Date
- 1898?
- Medium
- Oil on wood (furniture decoration)
- Dimensions
- 55 × 90 cm
- Signature
- Unsigned ?
- Present location
- Private Collection Switzerland
Catalogue numbers
| Compiler | Number |
|---|---|
| Arthur Pfannstiel | YES |
| Joseph Lanthemann | YES |
| Ambrogio Ceroni | YES |
| Jeanne Modigliani | YES |
| Christian Parisot | YES |
| Osvaldo Patani | YES |
| Modigliani Project | ? |
| MR | ? |
| Modigliani Initiative | ? |
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
- 1947, Margherita Modigliani
- Anna Mondolfi ( sister of Uberto Mondolfi), Naples (1958)
- 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.
- Revista di Livorno - no. 5 - 1957 Uberto Mondolfi nel ricordo di sua figlia, page 12
- Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, Orion Press, New York, 1958, pl. 18 (dated in 1896)
- Modigliani J., Modigliani sans légende, Gründ, Paris, 1961
- Lanthemann, Catalogue Raisonne, G. Condal, Barcelona, 1970, no. 1, no. 23
- Parisot, Modigliani biography, Canalearte, Milano, 2000, p. 60
- Soto Caba, Modigliani, the timeless face, Libsa, 2007
Exhibitions
- Venezia, Modigliani e i suoi, Fondazione Cini, 1999 (curated by Christian Parisot)
- Bari, A. Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne e gli artisti di Montmartre e Montparnasse, Castello Svevo, 2003 (curated by Christian Parisot)
- Caserta, A. Modigliani Jeanne Hébuterne e gli artisti di Montmartre e Montparnasse, Belvedere Reale di San Leucio, 2003
Notes
Furniture made by Uberto Mondolfi decoration by Amedeo Modigliani
Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.
Essay:
Allegory of Life: Amedeo Modigliani’s Juvenile Painted Furniture Panels
Amedeo Modigliani’s Allegory of Life (c. 1896–1898) is a rare and illuminating early work: an oil-painted decoration on the upright panels of a wooden shelf or étagère, rather than a conventional canvas. Measuring roughly 55 × 90 cm in its painted sections (with the full furniture piece cited in some records around 92 × 33.5 × 29.5 cm), the object was fabricated by Uberto Mondolfi, Modigliani’s close childhood friend from Livorno, and decorated by the young artist himself. Unsigned and now in a private Swiss collection, it is documented in major catalogues (Pfannstiel, Lanthemann, Ceroni, Jeanne Modigliani, Parisot, Patani) and has appeared in exhibitions such as Modigliani e i suoi (Fondazione Cini, Venice, 1999) and shows in Bari and Caserta in 2003. Jeanne Modigliani dated a related view to 1896 in her 1958 biography Modigliani: Man and Myth (pl. 18).
The piece consists of two principal vertical wooden uprights flanking curved shelves. On one face appears the bust-length portrait of an elderly, bearded man. His long white hair and flowing beard cascade down the panel in pale, almost luminous strokes against a deep reddish-brown ground that blends into the wood. The face is frontal yet slightly weathered, with heavy lids, a prominent nose, and an expression of weary solemnity. The handling is direct and somewhat crude: the paint sits opaquely on the wood, the contours are firm but not refined, and the modeling relies more on broad tonal shifts than on sophisticated chiaroscuro. The figure occupies nearly the full height of the panel, his beard and hair merging with the vertical grain of the support.
The opposite upright presents a more complex, dual image. At the upper register is the head and shoulders of a young woman with long, golden-yellow hair that streams downward in thick, undulating locks. Her face is pale, the eyes large and somewhat staring, the mouth set in a neutral or faintly downturned line. A small red flower or ornament sits in her hair on the right side of her head. Below her, emerging from or attached to the lower portion of the same panel, is a clearly rendered human skull, painted in yellowish bone tones against the reddish ground. The woman’s hair visually connects the two elements, so that the living head and the emblem of death share the same vertical field. The paint here is more varied in hue—ochres, golds, and the vivid red accent—yet still retains the same youthful directness.
According to testimony preserved by Jeanne Modigliani and drawn from Uberto Mondolfi himself, the two sides were conceived with explicit symbolic intent. The woman’s head together with the skull were meant to embody “love in all its destructive power,” while the bearded old man represented the male “succubus as he too often is.” These words, recorded when Modigliani was only about twelve, already reveal a precocious, somewhat dark and anti-conformist imagination. The work therefore functions as a juvenile moral or allegorical statement rather than a simple decorative exercise. The collaboration itself is telling: Mondolfi supplied the carpentry, Modigliani the painted program, turning an ordinary piece of domestic furniture into a personal manifesto.
Visually, the piece is far removed from the elongated necks, mask-like faces, and refined linear elegance of Modigliani’s mature Parisian portraits. The forms are more naturalistic, the proportions closer to observed anatomy, and the color range limited and earthy. Yet certain traits already anticipate later concerns. The emphasis on the head as the primary site of expression, the frontal presentation, and the willingness to treat the human figure as a vehicle for symbolic rather than purely descriptive meaning all reappear, transformed, in the adult oeuvre. The skull motif, in particular, introduces a vanitas element that is rare in Modigliani’s later output but consistent with the melancholic undercurrent often noted in his work.
Technically, the support is wood rather than canvas or cardboard, and the paint appears applied without extensive underdrawing or glazing. Edges are sometimes abrupt, and the integration of the painted figures with the functional object (the shelves project outward, the uprights serve structural roles) means the images must be read while walking around the piece. This circumambulatory aspect distinguishes it from the frontal, easel-painting mode Modigliani would later adopt. The reddish ground unifies both panels and allows the pale faces and the skull to stand out with a certain luminosity.
In the larger arc of Modigliani’s career, Allegory of Life occupies a foundational position. It is one of the earliest surviving painted works, created years before his formal studies in Florence and Venice and long before his arrival in Paris in 1906. It demonstrates that the impulse toward figurative allegory, psychological intensity, and the human head as emblem was already active in adolescence. At the same time, the collaborative, furniture-based format underscores how thoroughly embedded the young artist was in the domestic and social milieu of Livorno’s Jewish middle class—an environment he would later rebel against, yet whose early imprint remains visible in this object.
The work’s survival and repeated inclusion in catalogues and exhibitions confirm its authenticity within the Modigliani literature, even while the secretmodigliani.com research page notes that certain modern catalogue raisonné projects mark it with a question. Its present status as a private-collection piece of painted furniture rather than a museum canvas has kept it relatively obscure, yet its iconographic clarity and biographical significance make it an essential document of Modigliani’s beginnings. In the elongated, melancholic faces of the Paris years one can still sense the same youthful preoccupation with love, mortality, and the burdens of masculinity first given form on these wooden uprights.
Footnotes
- Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, New York, Orion Press, 1958.
- Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani sans légende, Paris, Gründ, 1961.
- Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, Barcelona, G. Condal, 1970.
- Victoria Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, Madrid, Libsa, 2007.