What Made Modigliani?

When Amedeo Modigliani was eleven, his mother wrote in her diaries, “The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. We shall have to see what’s inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?” A prophetic statement indeed, as despite his premature death from tubercular meningitis at just 35, her son would become one of the most important modern Italian painters, a key exponent of the avant-garde movement that flourished in Paris during the first years of the 20th…