Besides his marked contribution – over the past two decades – to the world of culture, museums, and successful exhibitions, Marc Restellini is also a pioneer in the scientific field of art history. He elaborated in his Master’s thesis, a catalogue raisonné based on the most recent data processing methods, which had never been applied to this field, of his grandfather’s work – Isaac Antcher (1899–1992), a painter from the School of Paris.

He then created at Paris I Panthéon–Sorbonne University, under the impulse of Professor Marc Le Bot, a seminar on methodology in art history, in order to link data processing to the doctoral students’ research. He oversaw the seminar in conjunction with the CNRS (represented by Professor Françoise Levaillant) to set up the teaching of the methodologies he had developed for his own research.

In 1997, invited by Daniel Wildenstein, he embarked on the challenge of developing a new Amedeo Modigliani’s Catalogue Raisonné. He was the first to establish an analytical protocol so that every new artwork submitted would have to undergo technical analyses, including pigment identification with X-ray microfluorescence and the use of infrared reflectography, later employing innovative methods like the digital process of “false colours”. It was the first time in France that a private institution would create such a standard for a Catalogue Raisonné. With his 600 documentary files on Modigliani’s works and forgeries, he created a unique comparative calibration, to which he has associated the use of new technologies as they were developed. Marc Restellini has always emphasized the importance of science in the art history field, making the acquisition and development of a state-of-the-art scientific laboratory the next logical step in his pursuit.