Henri Colt

Modigliani's lost opportunity

Growing up in the coastal town of Livorno, Italy, Amedeo Modigliani had suffered from Tuberculosis, Typhoid, and Scarlet fever, all of which almost killed him while still a youth. Each time he was ill, his mother Eugenie Garsin, nurtured him back to health, at the same time nurturing his talent for painting. She took the teenage Modigliani to Italy’s greatest museums so he could study and copy classic works from well-known Renaissance, Florentine and Neapolitan painters, continuing to "home-school" him in literature and philosophy. During these trips and thereafter, symptoms of tuberculosis continued to plague the young man while he restlessly engaged in spiritualism and philosophical discussions, always drawing vigorously. Sadly, virtually no works exist from those very early years.