This corpus of three works is certainly preceded by the small Head from the Paul Guillaume collection that, after various changes of ownership, was purchased in the 1960s by Herbert Singer and then ended up at Sotheby's auction on February 5, 2007 where was bought, with a unfulfilling result for a Modigliani work, from the Colección Abelló in Madrid. As already said, the dating of this small sculpture that recalls the Danaide of Brancusi carved in 1908, can only be preceding to the corpus of the three female heads previously mentioned, it is therefore assumed it was realized around 1910.

We have therefore come to talk to the earliest heads by Modigliani and we will do it, as always, taking into account the unavoidable factor of the aesthetic quality of these works and the period in which we can place themself. So let's recap, we have still 9 heads, 3 of which forming part of the same context and carried out for sure during the summer 1909 in Livorno. From this list we begin meanwhile to remove the sculptures that show a step forward than the others, such as the Head in private collection (previously owned by Perls Galleries, New York) and the Head sold by Christie's on May 13, 2019. The first head shows strong analogies with the head in the Kimbell Art Museum so much to seem a refined reinterpretation of it. It goes without saying the head in question can only have been carved also before the Heads pictured in the photo taken inside Cardoso's studio. The head sold by Christie's, instead, presents some striking similarities with the lost head that appears in the photo taken in the Portuguese painter's atelier, such as the hair treatment, the common cut in the lower part of the eyes and the same conformation of the nose and mouth. This leads to the supposition that this work may have been realized between 1910 and 1911.

The remaining sculptures shows primitive features which recalling Brancusi's activity in the years between 1907 and the first months of 1909, but also some imperfections that are not evident in the other works we have discussed until now. In the Head of a woman in the Musée national d'Art moderne (MNAM), Center Georges Pompidou (Paris) the primitivist style and influence appears less evident than the other works we will talk, even if we are clearly still in a experimental phase (as confirmed by the presence of a sketch, on the back of this sculpture, whose somatic features recall those of The Wisdom of the Earth by Brancusi elaborated in 1908). It is difficult to date this sculpture, but with all possible imagination, we cannot advance the idea that it may have been carved after 1910.

Now we can talk about that group of sculptures in which primitive suggestions, from art nègre to oriental art, especially Khmer from ancient Cambodia, are explicitly revealed. The Head today at Princeton University Art Museum, owned by Henry & Rose Pearlman Foundation, shows, for example, brutal blows inflicted by violent and rapid chisel strokes only just to outline the somatic features. Not having available ancient photos of this sculpture, we cannot accept the hypothesis that it has been battered or damaged by time, a possibility quite hard to accept also considering the same approximate and hasty working of both sides. Everything leads us to think of a work realized around 1910, that is in the period in which the artist, in sculpture as in painting, was addressing his studies towards the research of essentiality and simplification of forms.

The Head in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., shows a further step backward from the Head in the Pinceston Museum, even if we always remain in an experimentation and incompleteness phase. The figure is sculpted, or rather rough-hewn, on a flat surface (like the sculptural technique of bas-relief); the facial features are slightly sketched and the oval of the face, as well as the neck and hair area, has been carved with a claw-chisel. The execution of this sculpture is visibly sketchy, clumsy, without volume, so it appears lacking of that distinctive peculiarity of all Modigliani's works. It is not by chance that, due to the ease of execution it arouses, it was taken as a model by the students of Livorno to realize their "Modì 1" with the will, well succeeded, to make a funny joke that went down in history as "the 1984 hoax". And yet, this Head, first published in a catalog in the 1950s, is incredibly dated between 1911 and 1912, that is as the masterpiece of the Tate Modern: that's absurd!

The only sculptures having a right dating, are also the only ones located in Italy. They are three heads carved in 1909 (two works bears an incised dating) that were part of a corpus of 5 works, 2 of which tragically disappeared during the bombings of World War II. The history of these heads is summed on this page; it can be reconstructed thanks to the newspaper articles linked here and, in more detail, is published in "Amedeo Modigliani 'the stumbling blocks' - The story of the real heads of Modigliani" by Sillabe, 2016. The three sculptures were authenticated by Carlo Pepi in 1991, in 1993 by James Beck, by Wayne Vesti Andersen and also the art historian Enzo Carli, through a letter addressed to Carlo Pepi on October 24, 1993, declared to consider more than reliable the fatherhood to Modigliani of the sculptures in question.

On the opening day of the exhibition "The Unknown Modigliani. Drawings from the collection of Paul Alexandre" at Palazzo Grassi (Venice, 1993), Carlo Pepi identified some drawings that fit perfectly with these sculptures and that showed new features also, such as the shape of the half-hexagonal nose designed for the first time by Modigliani; in particular Pepi pointed out that in the Head ß it is possible to observe even the identical perspective curvatures, the same profile, the same perspective asymmetry, the same eyes, the same engravings on the forehead, the same proportion in the asymmetries both eyes and face, the same displacement with respect to the horizontal plane of the two different lines passing through the eyes, the same rhythms and so on. In 2015 they were examined by Prof. Corrado Gratziu and Alessandra Moscato [Gra-Al-Lab], a work which involved the collaboration of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Pisa. The expertise on the three heads and the graphological expertise carried out by Valeria Zacconi in 1991 on the glosses on margins of an eighteenth-century book saved together with these works are published in the documentary material in the book by Sillabe.

Among many articles concerning these sculptures, the one published by the art historian and writer Gloria Fossi for Arte e Dossier (February 2018) is, in the writer's opinion, one of the most important. The Florentine art historian went to London to see and review the Modigliani exhibition at the Tate Modern where she was able to appreciate, among over one hundred works on display, 'The Beggar of Leghorn', 1909 - a key work regarding the story of the three heads - and nine sculptures joined for the great London event. Just arrived in Italy, the desire to see the three sculptures and the other objects saved with them arose in her and, at the same time, to re-examine what had been written about Modigliani's sculptural activity. In summary it is a remarkable work, well-documented - despite the limits of space - and absolutely original, given that the matter was approached by the author in a completely autonomous way with respect to the 'specialists' who preceded her. Link article from Arte e Dossier February 2018

An important detail regarding the morphological characteristics of the three stones emerges from the petrographic testing. In a nutshell, these are three lithotypes (sandstone) coming from the same metamorphic facies in which it is recognizable the same matter source, this means that the three stones arrived in Livorno at the same time.
The darker sculpture, more sketched, without base, damaged on the right occipital part and partially on the nose in the left extremity, is carved in a stone originated in an asphyxial environment: to this is due both its color more dark, and the greater hardness compared to the other two stones. Probably for the stone's morphological characteristic, not easy to work for the high risk of breaking, it has been carved with a point chisel (tool usually used to rough-out the stone block), while, around the nose, we can see the same type of working of the Head in the Latner Art Collection in Toronto (the last sculpture we will talk about), through the use of a claw-chisel. The influence of African masks and the "brutalism" of Brancusi's works such as The Kiss and The Wisdom of the Earth is evident in this head. It is visible a step backwards compared to the other two works from Livorno, this leads us to deduce that it was the first to be sculpted, hence the name Testa α.

The Head ß (because most likely done second), is realized on a very soft sandstone and shows a more advanced level of working than the first one as well as a more convincing result. It too without neck although having a basement, it shows some "primitive" characteristics of the African model, but unlike the Head α, there is a more refined definition of the surface of the epidermis which appears, for the first time in Modigliani's sculptural works, accurately smoothed. For the first time we also see that ornamental decorations under the forehead that we find in many preparatory studies of the Alexandre collection drawings and that in posthumous sculptures will take the form of the classic bangs. The remarkable ductility of the stone has certainly favored the opportunity for new solutions, from the resolution of the volumes, to the decorative aspects that begin to carve out an important role in the construction of the work.

Even the third head presents itself without basement since its origins given that no signs of damage can be seen. Made on a beautiful light pink sandstone, it can only have been sculpted for last, hence the name Head γ. The further step forward compared to the other two works is irrefutable; a stylistic progression in the direction of those expressive choices that will be elaborated in the sculptures carved between 1911 and 1912: the size of the nose are lengthened, the decorative aspects are accentuated, while the eyes, for the first time, are slightly asymmetrical, so giving to this work that mysterious and enigmatic look we find in some sculptures produced in the following years. Let it be said: any type of comparison with posthumous sculptures is still daring, after all, the overcoming primitivism it still remains an upcoming project. Here too, like for the Head β, the [medium] hardness of the stone has contributed significantly for the finalisation of this work: it can be seen a greater skill with the "tools of the trade" through a combination of the tools used for the realization of the two previous heads, additionally, the processing of the features of the face and of the eyebrow arch with the same technique used in the other two Livorno works also appears accentuated. Both in this sculpture and in the Head β, we can see some Cabalistic - Alchemical symbols of difficult interpretation that we find in several works by Modigliani.

It remains to talk to the last sculpture, the one in the Toronto's Latner Art Collection which should be the first sculpted by Modigliani in Paris. This hypothesis is explained by the use of the chisel handled in a vertical position with the intention of obtaining a shape by "digging" and not by shaping the stone (same technique we find for the realization of the Head in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection in Washington DC). This detail suggests a neophyte sculptor without a clear idea of ​​what he intends to achieve: the strokes inflicted on the right side of this work seem to indicate, in fact, a sculptor who is trying to become familiar with the chisel and with the right power to be impressed on it. This Head is usually dated between 1911 and 1912, that is in the years in which Modigliani completed his most famous masterpieces, another clear proof that, with regard to sculpture, the aesthetic, contextual, but also documentary factor, are elements inadequately taken into account by Art criticism even if, together with the continuous movements between Montmartre and Montparnasse (as Jeanne Modigliani wrote) and to the discontinuity of sculptural practice, are the foundation of the major misunderstandings about the "sculpture period" and the chronology of the individual works.