In literary legend, the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), so talented and so wilfully unsuccessful, wasted his health and his good looks in drunken bouts and sexual brawls. He died of tubercular meningitis in a freezing studio. During his lifetime, one of his paintings would sell for #4 or #5; today, a Modigliani sold at auction would fetch an astronomical figure. Jean Cocteau was once asked if the artist was mad. "He must have been by the standards of our age", Cocteau replied. "Instead of selling his drawings, he gave them away." Despite his dissipation, Modigliani left a large body of work now housed in museums and private collections all over the world. This biography benefits from first-hand accounts from Modigliani's family and friends and collectors of his work. These sources range from his daughter Jeanne to Jean Cocteau and Sir Osbert Sitwell.