Secret Modigliani

Caryatid bended Knee - The coffee bean

Oil on canvas — 1911-12-13 ?

Date1911-12 - 13 ?
MediumOil on canvas
Size72.9 × 50,1 cm
CollectionKunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
SignatureUnsigned
Investigation64

caryatid- coffee bean by amedeo modigliani
Identification

Title
English: The coffee bean (Others); Caryatid (The Jewish Museum, 2017–18); Caryatid Bended Knee (Tate Papers)
Italian: Cariatide appoggiata sul ginocchio destro (Ceroni)
German: Karyatide (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen);
Date
1911-12 - 13 ?
Notes: c. 1911–1912 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen); c. 1911 (Jewish Museum checklist; Lanthemann and Kleini); c. 1912 (Jewish Museum); 1911–13 (Tate Papers); 1913 (Ceroni, Parisot 2/1913); 1910 (d'Atri papers).
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
72.9 × 50,1 cm
Notes: 72.9 × 50.1 × 2 cm; frame 102.3 × 79.1 × 8 cm (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen); 72.5 × 50 cm, 28½ × 19¾ in. (Jewish Museum, Parisot, Patani); 73 × 50 cm (Ceroni and Pfannstiel); 75 × 50 cm (List of Ceroni numbers); 75.5 × 50 cm (MR 2002); 73 × 50 (d'Atri).
Signature
Unsigned
Present location
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Inv. 0128, acquired 1962.

Catalogue numbers

Compiler Number
Arthur Pfannstielno. 21
Joseph Lanthemannno. 532
Ambrogio Ceroni1958 / no. 27 -1970/ no. 35
Jeanne ModiglianiYES
Christian Parisot2/1913
Osvaldo Patanino. 39
Modigliani ProjectYES
MR#RP 40 ?
(Data from Museum File)
Modigliani Initiative/ AMDC?

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. Amedeo Modigliani
  2. Paul Alexandre (1929 still in his possession)
  3. Galerie Berggruen, Paris
  4. The Vaduz intermediary (Contemporary Art Establishment, 1962)?
  5. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf since 1962

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.

Exhibitions

Notes

Museum record (verified): Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (inv. 0128). Oil on canvas, c. 73 × 50 cm, 1911/12. Title: Caryatid / Karyatide (bended knee / “coffee bean”).

As no. 209 in D' Atri papers - dated in 1910 located in Alexandre collection in 1929

This is one of the most interesting paintings to read.

1.- Next to the head of the caryatid there is another head in brown mixed with the background, almost as if it were on the shadows of the front one:
The hair style is absolutelly similar to the ones used in classical greek sculpture showing a more mediterranean aspect instead of african.
Turn the image 180º you discover a new painting and a simple glimpse to the egyptian sculptures, an open door to speculation: The inversion may be a working experiment.
A Maldoror reading has been proposed in some literature.

Where sources disagree, both readings are given. This is a working research page, not a catalogue raisonné.

second caryatid
Second caryatid
greek style
Greek style
caryatid turned 180 degrees showing a new painting
Caryatid turned 180 degrees showing a new painting
the painting framed at the jewish museum expo in 2018
Painting framed at the Jewish museum expo in 2018

Introduction

A naked woman kneels and lifts both arms to hold a heavy slab above her head. Her body is a mass of red-orange and brown, outlined in black and edged with a thin line of cream. The figure is compressed into a vertical oval, and the slab she carries is a flat rectangle of the same red-orange. The background is a dark brown-black that fills the space around her, with large areas of bare canvas at the sides. There is a second head, in brown, mixed with the background beside her own head. When the painting is turned upside down, a new image appears: a face and a body that read as Egyptian. The signature is absent.

Iconography and models

The Jewish Museum's 2017–18 section text sets out the caryatid theme: "In 1911 Modigliani began to explore another motif borrowed from ancient art: the Greek figure of the caryatid. He produced innumerable drawings and paintings of standing or kneeling statuesque figures upholding an unseen architectural weight." In this painting the weight is not unseen: the slab is painted. The same text notes that Modigliani "adds elements derived from ancient South and Southeast Asian sources". It also says that the caryatid allowed him to move "beyond the brooding femme fatale of early works, such as The Jewess or Nude with a Hat, recasting the feminine subject in a heroic, spiritual, and universal light".
The Jewish Museum guide also links some of the kneeling caryatid drawings of 1911 to Anna Akhmatova, including Kneeling Caryatid, probably Anna Akhmatova, c. 1911, a blue crayon drawing (the checklist says "possibly Anna Akhmatova"). The guide says that "Modigliani also incorporated such Egyptianate poses in his caryatid figures". The LaM teaching dossier of 2016 suggests that the recurring figure of the caryatid "peut relier les deux activités", painting and sculpture, "en ce qu'elle représente un motif à vocation architecturale". The Düsseldorf painting is the clearest illustration of this link among the painted caryatids.

Comparisons

The standing caryatids C32, C33 and C34. The three standing figures are frontal, still and do not touch any architecture. The Düsseldorf caryatid kneels, turns, bows and visibly carries her load. The standing figures are painted in flat colour with linear drawing. The kneeling figure is modelled with double contours and directional brushwork. She is the most sculptural of the four.
Caryatid (C36), Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya. The Tate Papers list names this as the next caryatid in Ceroni's sequence. The Sotheby's 2005 note reproduces it as its fig. 2. I have not opened a page on it and cannot compare it in detail.
The gouaches and the limestone Caryatid. The Jewish Museum showed the Düsseldorf painting together with gouache caryatids of 1914, including the Museum of Modern Art's Caryatid (gouache and ink), as nos. 106 and 107 of its large-print guide. Its checklist also lists the limestone Caryatid, c. 1914, in the Museum of Modern Art, 92.1 cm high. The kneeling stone caryatid is the closest sculptural parallel to this painting. Ceroni's note speaks of "un'unica cariatide in pietra evidentemente allo stadio di abbozzo", a single stone caryatid evidently at the rough-hewn stage. That is presumably this sculpture or a similar one, though Ceroni does not say which.

Provenance and exhibitions

The museum's German page gives the provenance in stages: Amedeo Modigliani, Paris, 1911/1912 – "spätestens 1920"; Paul Alexandre, Paris, "mindestens 1920 – 1961/1962"; Berggruen & Cie, Paris, 1961/1962; Contemporary Art Establishment, Vaduz, 1962; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, since 1962. The English page gives only the narrative: Alexandre bought the painting "directly from the artist", and "the year of purchase is not known". It remained with him until it was sold to Galerie Berggruen & Cie "in the early 1960s", from which the museum bought it (acquisition year 1962). The Secret Modigliani page gives a shorter chain: Amedeo Modigliani; Paul Alexandre ("1929 still in his possession"); Galerie Berggruen, Paris; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen since 1962. It also notes that the d'Atri papers list the work as no. 209, "dated in 1910 located in Alexandre collection in 1929".
The museum lists exhibitions from 1991 onwards: Zurich, 1991; Cologne and Bruges, 1994; Montreal and Madrid, 1995–96; Rouen, 1996; Cologne, 1999–2000; Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2000–01; Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002–03; Milan, Palazzo Reale, 2003; Moscow, Pushkin Museum, 2007; Morioka, Iwate Museum of Art, 2008; Bonn, 2009; Trento and Rovereto, 2010–11; Duisburg, LehmbruckMuseum, 2011–12; Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Budapest and Helsinki, 2016–17; New York, The Jewish Museum, 2017–18; Düsseldorf, K20, 2018–19; and Stuttgart and Potsdam, 2023–24. The Secret Modigliani page adds earlier exhibitions: Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle, 1963, no. 54; Munich, 1972, no. 1879; London, Tate Gallery, 1974, no. 89; Tokyo and Osaka, 1979, no. 2; Liège, 1980, no. 2; Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1981, no. 12; Barcelona and Madrid, 1983, no. 8; and Toronto, 2004–05.

Discrepancies

  1. Date. The dates range from 1910 (d'Atri papers) to 1913 (Ceroni, Parisot). The museum gives c. 1911–1912. The Jewish Museum gives c. 1911 in its checklist but c. 1912 in its large-print guide and wall labels for the same exhibition. Ceroni's note implies that the painted caryatids come after the sculpture, which would favour a later date. The Jewish Museum's statement that Modigliani began the caryatid theme in 1911 fits an earlier one.
  2. Dimensions. 72.9 × 50.1 cm (museum), 72.5 × 50 cm (Jewish Museum, Parisot, Patani, Klein), 73 × 50 cm (Ceroni, Pfannstiel), 75 × 50 cm (Secret Modigliani list of Ceroni numbers) and 75.5 × 50 cm (Restellini in 2002 publication). The 75 and 75.5 cm heights are outliers.
  3. Provenance dates. The museum's German page says the painting passed to Alexandre "spätestens 1920" ("by 1920 at the latest"), on the grounds that Modigliani died in 1920. But the Tate Papers study notes that Alexandre was sent to the front in 1914, and "the pair never resumed contact thereafter". A transfer before August 1914 is therefore more likely. The Vaduz intermediary (Contemporary Art Establishment, 1962) appears only on the museum's German page.
  4. Catalogue raisonné number The museum gives "Restellini #RP 40". and cites the 2002 Musée du Luxembourg exhibition catalogue, no. 15; it gives no catalogue raisonné number.

Technical analysis

No technical study of this painting has been published, as far as I could find. It is not among the works examined in the Burlington Magazine introduction of 2018 or the Tate Papers no. 35. The museum's page gives only the medium, dimensions and the depth of the stretcher (2 cm), and it notes that the work is unsigned.
Support and format (comparative). The canvas corresponds closely to a standard marine 20 (my identification). The Burlington introduction found that the canvases it surveyed "seem to have been commercially prepared with an oil-based priming". It reports a supplier's stamp, "A. Moreaux, 106 Bd Montparnasse", on the reverse of the canvas of a caryatid painting of 1913 (C37), near the Cité Falguière, "where Modigliani was known to have had a studio from 1909 to 1912". It would be worth checking whether the Düsseldorf canvas carries a similar stamp. If it does, it would date the canvas's purchase and connect it with C37.
The second head and the inverted image. These are the main technical questions. Comparative: the Tate Papers study of hidden paintings shows that Modigliani reused canvases and that "the texture of the paintings indicated the presence of something painted below the surface". X-radiography and infrared reflectography would show whether the dark head beside the caryatid is part of an earlier composition, a change of position, or a deliberate double image. They would also show whether the canvas was painted in one orientation, which bears on the inverted reading.
Bare canvas. The large areas of bare canvas at the sides show the ground directly. If, as the Burlington study suggests for other works, the canvas was commercially primed, the cream colour is that of the priming. The museum's photograph shows the weave clearly in these areas.
Pigments (comparative only). The red-orange flesh is probably an iron oxide or vermilion mixture. Comparative: the Tate study of C40 found "lead and zinc white, vermilion and an iron-based pigment" in the skin of the face, and that the hand was painted with "only iron-based pigment". The dark ground might contain bone black and Prussian blue, as in C40's jacket. These comparisons suggest only what analysis might find.

Conclusion

The Düsseldorf Caryatid is the most fully realised of the painted caryatids that Ceroni catalogued as nos. 32–35. Here the figure kneels, bows her head and carries a painted slab. It is constructed from split ovals and double contours that give it the presence of carved stone. It stands, as the LaM dossier suggests, at the junction between Modigliani's painting and his sculpture. Ceroni's note sees the painted caryatids as a "creative continuation" of the sculpture rather than preparations for it, and this canvas, with its compression and weight, supports that reading.
It is also a painting full of open questions: the second head, the image that appears when it is turned upside down, the bare canvas, and the dates, dimensions and even the location given in the sources. As a museum work that has been exhibited constantly since 1963, it is well placed for a technical study that could resolve the most interesting of them.

Museum, auction and exhibition sources

  1. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Online-Sammlung, Karyatide, um 1911–1912, inv. 0128 (English page), https://sammlung.kunstsammlung.de/en/works/103
  2. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Online-Sammlung, Karyatide (German page, provenance in stages), https://sammlung.kunstsammlung.de/de/werke/103
  3. The Jewish Museum, New York, Modigliani Unmasked (2017–18), checklist, https://thejewishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Modigliani_Unmasked_checklist.pdf
  4. The Jewish Museum, New York, Modigliani Unmasked, large-print exhibition guide, https://thejewishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Modigliani_Large_Print_FINAL.pdf
  5. LaM, Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Amedeo Modigliani: l'œil intérieur, dossier pédagogique (2016), https://www.musee-lam.fr/sites/default/files/2019-01/Dossier-pedago-Modigliani-l-oeil-interieur.pdf
  6. Sotheby's, German and Austrian Art, Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale and Surrealist Art, 2005, sale L05002, lot 38 (catalogue note on C32–C33), https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2005/german-and-austrian-art-impressionist-and-modern-art-evening-sale-and-surrealist-art-l05002/lot.38.html

Technical literature (comparative)

  1. Anaïs Genty-Vincent et al., "Works by Modigliani that have Paintings beneath the Visible Surface", Tate Papers, no. 35, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/works-by-modigliani-that-have-paintings-beneath-the-visible-surface
  2. Barbara Buckley et al., "Modigliani's Painted Nudes: A Technical Study", Tate Papers, no. 35, https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/modiglianis-painted-nudes-technical-study
  3. Annette King, Nancy Ireson, Simonetta Fraquelli and Joyce H. Townsend, "The Modigliani Technical Research Study: An introduction to Modigliani's materials and techniques", The Burlington Magazine, vol. 160, no. 1380 (March 2018), https://www.burlington.org.uk/archive/article/the-modigliani-technical-research-study-an-introduction-to-modiglianis-materials-and-techniques

Cited but not independently consulted

Pfannstiel, Modigliani. L'Art et la Vie, 1929, p. 5, and Modigliani et son œuvre, 1956, no. 21; Jedlicka, Modigliani, 1953, pl. 8; Roy, Modigliani, 1958, p. 48, and 1985, p. 49; Russoli, Amedeo Modigliani, 1958, p. 22, and Palazzo Reale exhibition catalogue, 1958, p. 22; Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani peintre, 1958, no. 27; Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, 1958, pp. 64–75, Modigliani sans légende, 1961, pp. 64, 75, and Racconta Modigliani, 1984, p. 225; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen catalogue, 1968, p. 54; Werner, Amedeo Modigliani, 1968, p. 42; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1968, p. 42, and 1981, p. 107, no. 12; Lanthemann, 1970, no. 532; Ceroni and Piccioni, 1970, no. 35; Nakayama, 1974, pl. 3; Schmalenbach, Picasso to Lichtenstein, Tate Gallery, 1974, no. 89, pp. 200–01, and Amedeo Modigliani, 1990, p. 11, no. 9; Parisot, Barcelona exhibition catalogue, 1983, p. 79, no. 8, Catalogue raisonné, 1991, no. 2/1913, and Modigliani, 1992, p. 46; Tokyo, Modigliani, 1989, no. 3; Anna Ceroni, Les nus, 1989, p. 44; Patani, 1991–94, no. 39; Modigliani: l'ange au visage grave, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002, pp. 148–49, no. 15; Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, 2004, p. 102, pl. 17; Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, 2007; Le silence éternel, Pinacothèque de Paris, 2008, p. 29; Klein, Modigliani Unmasked, 2018; the d'Atri papers, no. 209; the catalogues of the exhibitions listed above. All are cited from the Secret Modigliani page on the work.

Footnotes

  1. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani. L’Art et la Vie, preface by Louis Latourette, Paris, Seheur, 1929 (presumed catalogue).
  2. Arthur Pfannstiel, Modigliani et son œuvre, étude critique et catalogue raisonné, Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts, 1956.
  3. Claude Roy, Modigliani, Lausanne / Paris, Skira / Nathan, 1958–85.
  4. Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani: Peintre; suivi des souvenirs de Lunia Czechowska, Milan, Edizioni del Milione, 1958.
  5. Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani: Man and Myth, New York, Orion Press, 1958.
  6. Jeanne Modigliani, Modigliani sans légende, Paris, Gründ, 1961.
  7. Alfred Werner, Amedeo Modigliani, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1966–85.
  8. Joseph Lanthemann, Modigliani, catalogue raisonné: sa vie, son œuvre, son art, Barcelona, G. Condal, 1970.
  9. Ambrogio Ceroni and Leone Piccioni, I dipinti di Modigliani, Milan, Rizzoli, 1970.
  10. Werner Schmalenbach, Amedeo Modigliani, Munich, Prestel, 1990.
  11. Christian Parisot, Catalogue raisonné Modigliani, Livorno, Graphis Arte, 1991.
  12. Osvaldo Patani, Amedeo Modigliani: catalogo generale, Milan, Leonardo, 1991–94.
  13. Christian Parisot, Modigliani, Paris, Pierre Terrail, 1992.
  14. MR (cited here as MR), Modigliani: l’ange au visage grave, Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 2002. Cited from the published exhibition catalogue only.
  15. Mason Klein, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, New York, The Jewish Museum / Yale University Press, 2004.
  16. Victoria Soto Caba, Modigliani: The Timeless Face, Madrid, Libsa, 2007.
  17. MR (cited here as MR), Le silence éternel, Paris, Pinacothèque de Paris, 2008. Cited from the published exhibition catalogue only.