Next time you’re strolling through the antique shop, make sure to listen to your gut. Italian entrepreneur and collector Paolo Guzzini did just that and now finds himself the owner of an original Amedeo Modigliani, according to a report from Corriere Adriatico.
Acquired some fifteen years ago from a private seller, the unsigned portrait—painted in Paris in 1906—was recently authenticated and published in the Modigliani archive of Rome.
The breakthrough came after Guzzini, curious about a distinctive seal on the back of the portrait, and with a little nudging from the critic Alberto Mazzacchera, he launched an investigation into the painting’s origins. The seal turned out to be the mark of a store where turn-of-the century artists in Montmartre would buy supplies.
The next step was consulting the Fondazione Amedeo Modigliani in Rome. Scientific analysis revealed characteristics consistent with Modigliani’s early Parisian period, including the use of inexpensive white paint favored by cost-saving artists of the time. The subject is believed to be Mario Cavalieri, a Venetian friend of the artist.
“The value of this artwork today is not only in its market price, but especially in its historic importance,” Guzzini said.
In November 2023 a similarly moody early work by Modigliani sold at Sotheby’s Paris Impressionist and Modern evening sale for more than $403,000.
Earlier this year a rare watercolor landscape by 19th century Philadelphia artist William H. Dorsey was found in a thrift store in Glendale, Pennsylvania. The $10 purchase now hangs in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
And in 2023, a $4 painting scooped out of the bin in Manchester, New Hampshire revealed itself as an oil on panel work by N. C. Wyeth and valued at up to $250,000.
Though, not every antiques buyer wins the jackpot. A man in Minnesota believed a $50 painting picked up at a garage sale was identified as a possible long lost Vincent van Gogh titled Elimar. The New York-based art-research firm LMI Group International bought the work from the anonymous collector for an undisclosed sum in 2019, then released a 458-page report claiming the portrait was an original by the Post-Impressionist. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam thought otherwise and said the picture could not be attributed to painter, which left LMI Group reportedly “puzzled.”
