Christie's hopes to get $100 million for Modigliani nude

christies modigliani

Christie's hopes to get $100 million for a century-old nude by the famous bohemian painter Amedeo Modigliani.

And it just might get it, considering the nine-digit prices that Modern Art masterpieces have been getting.

Christies's broke a record when it sold a Picasso for $179 million in May. The auction house had expected to get $140 million for the painting, "Les femmes d'Alger."

The prior record was $142 million for Francis Bacon's "Three Studies of Lucian Freud," which was sold in 2013. The current record for a Modigliani is a sculpture that sold for $70.7 million last year.

Christie's is putting the Modigliani on the auction block November 9 in New York. The painting, "Reclining Nude," dates from 1917 and 1918, the final years of World War I.

Christie's said the painting "caused a scandal" when Modigliani exhibited it nearly 100 years ago at his "first and only" one-man show in Paris.

"Outraged by the content of the show -- which had caused a crowd to form outside the gallery window where one of Modigliani's nudes was openly on display -- the police demanded the immediate closure of the exhibition," said Christie's.

Modigliani was an Italian libertine who died poor, at age 35, but not before he painted a lot of nudes.

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