Art Forgery Stories Miami
The Modigliani that hung for years in Miami
Friends of Elmyr de Hory donated a portrait they believed was a Modigliani. Years later the museum returned it.
A couple who knew Elmyr de Hory bought a portrait believing it was by Amedeo Modigliani. They donated it to a Miami art museum, where visitors saw it for years under Modigliani’s name.
The portrait came back to the donors after de Hory was exposed. A Winterthur Museum investigation later identified a green pigment on de Hory’s palette that postdated Modigliani’s death. That finding concerns the palette and illustrates how such a pigment could rule out an attribution if found in a painting.
Orson Welles used de Hory’s story in F for Fake. The museum episode has its own unsettling detail: a private purchase made in trust became an institutional attribution that visitors could take at face value.
