Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy, the youngest of four children in a relatively poor family who had been established in Italy for generations. Amedeo suffered from ill health as a child and was never very physically strong. During his teenage years he had an attack of typhoid and pleurisy which left him with a tubercular lung that haunted him throughout his life.

Modigliani showed signs of artistic talent at an early age and at fifteen began to study art at the school of Livorno artist Guglielmo Micheli. In 1902, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Art in Florence. After a brief stint inVenice, Modigliani moved to Paris in early 1906, where he would spend the rest of his life.

In Paris he began painting and drawing feverishly, discovering Cezanne, Lautrec and Picasso, who played a large part in developing his art. He also began sculpting in stone which put an enormous strain on his fragile lungs. This, combined with his poor living conditions in damp, dirty studios without proper food and too much alcohol and drugs, took its toll but never stopped Modigliani from painting.

As the first world war reached its climax, Modigliani, his health deteriorating, had a one-man exhibition in Paris and was starting to gain notoriety as an artist when the police closed the exhibit down because of the large erotic nude canvases in the window. His dealer, seriously concerned for his health, sent him to the South of France where he painted constantly and his mistress, Jeanne Hebuterne, gave birth to their daughter in November of 1918. He returned to Paris the following year to an increasing number of favourable reviews, while his health continued to deteriorate, aggravated by heavy drinking . In January of 1920, friends found Modigliani delirious and in severe pain in his studio. They took him to the hospital, where he died of tubercular meningitis on the 24th of January. The next day, Jeanne Hebuterne, pregnant with their second child, jumped out of a fifth floor apartment killing both herself and the child.