Buyer’s Dealer Allegedly Cheated Buyer $25 million After Paying $93m

choi

Robert Frank, A multimillion-Dollar Markup on a Modigliani; A Russian billionaire’s fraud accusation offers a peek inside the world of high-end art sales. New York Times, Apr 4, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/busin ... n-a-modigliani.html
("Sandy Heller, the New York art dealer * * * casually mentioned a Modigliani painting that had been sold by one of his clients, Steve Cohen. * * * Mr Rybolovlev asked about the sale price, and the next day, after checking with Mr. Cohen, Mr. Heller told him: $93 million. Mr Rybolovlev was taken aback by the answer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Heller didn’t know it, but Mr. Rybolovlev was the buyer of the painting and had paid $118 million"

Excerpt in the window of print: In the $60 billion art market, buyers often can’t find out real prices.

Note:
(a) Read only the first several paragraphs.

(b)
(i) Amedeo Modigliani
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani
(1884-1920, died at age 35 in Paris of tubercular meningitis; Italian)
(ii) Amedeo
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo
(an Italian given name meaning "lover of God", "loves God", or more correctly "for the love of God" and cognate to the Latin name Amadeus and the Spanish and Portuguese Amadeo)
(iii)For pronunciation of Modigliani, see
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/modigliani

(c) “Last New Year’s Eve, Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian billionaire, sat down to lunch at the Eden Rock resort in St Bart’s”
(i) Saint Barthélemy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Barthélemy
(an overseas collectivity of France; "Christopher Columbus was the first European to discover the island in 1493. He named it after his brother Bartolomeo")

The rest of section 1 History is wrong.
(ii) St Barts Island History. St Barts Online, undated
www.st-barths.com/en/saint-barth ... helemy-history.html
("St Barths was first settled in 1648 by French colonists from the nearby island of St. Kitts. [It failed.] In 1763, the island was settled again, this time by French mariners from Normandy and Brittany. This colony succeeded. * * * Except for a brief military takeover by the British in 1758, St. Barths remained French until 1784, when it was sold suddenly to Sweden by one of Louis XVI's ministers in exchange for trading rights in the Swedish port of Gothenburg. * * * France repurchased the island in 1878")

(d) Nu Couché au Coussin Bleu

French English dictionary
* nu (adjective masculine; from Latin nūdus): "(person): naked nude"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nu

But “nu” can be a noun in French, when referring to art. See nu (noun masculine): “(art [French and English share the same spelling]): “nude”
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/french-english/nu

* couché (adjective masculine and feminine; past participle of coucher lay down): "in bed"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/couché
* au: "contraction of à le"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/au
* coussin (noun masculine): "cushion"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coussin
* bleu (adjective masculine): "blue"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bleu