Hat On, Hat Off

Amedeo Modigliani’s 1908 Nude with a Hat is hung upside down because another painting by him, Maud Abrantes, on the reverse side of the same canvas is oriented correctly, while on display at Haifa University’s Hecht Museum. Photo: Ariel Schalit/AP.

And Venus is Blue

Amedeo Modigliani, Woman Sitting in Blue Dress, 1917-1919
Courtesy: WikiArt/Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden

Seated Man With a Cane

Mossack Fonseca helped a New York art gallery defend itself over a claim about a Nazi-looted artwork after the apparent original owner’s descendant launched a legal battle for its return, the Panama Papers reveal. The case involves a $25m (£18m) Modigliani painting taken from Paris when the Germans marched into the city in 1940 and the role played by Mossack Fonseca, as the family who say it is theirs fought for its return. The artwork in question is the 1918 Seated Man With a Cane, and the story of its theft and reemergence blends the injustice of treasures taken during the second world war with the smoke and mirrors of 21st-century offshore tax havens. [Read more].

• Holly Watt, David Pegg and Juliette Garside, Mossack Fonseca’s role in fight over painting stolen by Nazis, The Guardian, April 7, 2016

Amedeo Modigliani’s “Seated Man With a Cane” (1918), valued at over $25 million. The painting disappeared after its original owner had to leave it in Paris when he fled the Nazis, descendent says.