Nearly a century after the premature death of Amedeo Modigliani, his allure continues to grow, with the price of his work soaring into Picasso territory and several major exhibitions in the offing. The only question is: How many Modiglianis are fakes? As experts vie for authority and museums test their collections, Milton Esterow delves into the artist’s turbulent legacy

‘It’s good, bad, ugly, and bizarre,” Kenneth Wayne, one of the world’s leading Modigliani scholars, said at a recent symposium at New York University on fakes, forgeries, and stolen art. “To say that the catalogue raisonné situation of works by Modigliani is a mess is an understatement.”

There have been lawsuits, charges of slander, death threats, hoaxes, and thefts. A Modigliani specialist has been convicted of falsely attributing works to Modigliani. A skyrocketing market for works by the artist has been plagued by fakes in Russia, Serbia, and Italy (where Modigliani was born). Perhaps appropriately for one of the world’s most faked artists, there have even been fake fakes. Experts, meanwhile, are jockeying to be recognized as the ultimate authority on what should and should not be accepted as authentic.

Jean Cocteau was drawn by Modigliani many times. Cocteau once recalled, “He used to hand out his drawings like some gypsy fortuneteller, giving them away, and that explains why, although there are some fifty drawings of me in existence, I only own one.” It also explains why it’s hard to say where every Modigliani comes from.

Perhaps appropriately for one of the world’s most faked artists, there have even been fake fakes.

Modigliani’s legend continues to grow, and as one of his biographers, Pierre Sichel, has noted, “it has been assisted by sensational novels, hoked up or fictionalized biographies, and films that of course accent drink, drugs, degradation, sex, sin, and madness . . . ” Others have been divided about the man himself. “He was a visionary, a poet and philosopher, even a mystic,” wrote biographer Meryle Secrest, “or he was a minor character, whose romantic life story led some to place more importance on his work than it deserved.”

The stakes are high and are only getting higher. Modigliani prices, long dormant, have been climbing dramatically. Liu Yiqian, a former taxi driver who built a fortune in the stock market and has become one of China’s leading art collectors, paid $170.4 million in 2015 at Christie’s in New York for a Modigliani painting, Nu Couché (Reclining Nude). The previous record for a Modi-gliani was $70.7 million, paid at Sotheby’s in 2014 for a carved-stone head of a woman. The acceleration in the Modigliani market is said to have begun in 2010 at a Christie’s sale in Paris, where a Modigliani sculpture, expected to sell for between $5 million and $7 million, went for $52 million.

Modigliani in his workshop in Paris, circa 1918. By Marc Vaux/APIC/Getty Images.

Although the prices for Modigliani’s work have reached those for works by Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Alberto Giacometti, and Andy Warhol—all of them members of the exclusive $100 Million Club—the Modigliani market is beset with problems. Writing in ARTnews, the global director of Art Basel, Marc Spiegler, quoted a Parisian dealer: “The drama here is that I could find a Modigliani in an attic tomorrow, with a letter from Modigliani attached to it, and people would still hesitate.”

Starting this fall, experts will examine dozens of Modiglianis now in museums to learn more about how he created his works. Leading the way is a committee of prominent curators and conservators that will test the 27 paintings and three sculptures in French museums. “It’s a work in progress,” Jeanne-Bathilde Lacourt, a member of the committee (Kenneth Wayne is another) and the curator of modern art at the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art, told me. “We expect to finish the testing by the end of 2018 or early 2019. By then, I think, we will know a lot more about Modigliani’s methods.”

Next November, the Tate Modern, in London, will open “Modigliani,” the largest show of his work ever held in England. It will run through spring 2018 and include about 90 of his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, works borrowed from museums and collectors in six countries. “The purpose of the exhibition is to show Modigliani’s personal and creative development, to introduce Modigliani to a new generation and indicate how relevant he is now,” Nancy Ireson, co-organizer of the show, told me. “The Modigliani story is of a young person arriving in a foreign city and finding their creative identity. He would not be Modigliani if he had not moved from Italy and experienced the cosmopolitan character of Paris at a particular moment in time.” Before it opens, the Tate will subject its three Modigliani paintings and its one Modigliani sculpture to testing and analysis. The Courtauld Institute, in London, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Guggenheim Museum, which are lending works to the exhibition, have already indicated that they will closely examine their own Modiglianis. Other institutions may do the same.