Amedeo Modigliani

The Sun, Mercury and Venus sit inside nine tenths of a degree of each other in Cancer, which is three planets inside a single degree and about as concentrated as a group gets. Water takes four of his ten planets, earth three, air two and a single one fire, with five of the ten mutable. His Moon's sign is certain at eight degrees of Pisces. Venus was the only retrograde planet. The record says Modigliani painted elongated faces with blank eyes and sold almost nothing, that he died of tubercular meningitis at thirty five, and that his partner, nine months pregnant, killed herself the next day.

Mercury sits conjunct Venus at under a third of a degree inside that group, and the reading is that thought is pleasing: a good ear for language, diplomacy, and a preference for the elegant answer over the exhaustive one. The last clause is the one worth holding up against a painter. An elongated face with blank eyes is an elegant answer rather than an exhaustive one, and a style is exactly a decision about which of those to make every time. The record supplies the method and the contact supplies a word for it.

The Sun sits conjunct Venus at under three fifths of a degree, self-worth and taste fusing, read as charm and an eye for the pleasing, with a standing clause about somebody who is liked easily and therefore rarely tested. The record answers the second half with four words: sold almost nothing. Being liked easily is not what a working life of unsold paintings describes, and the fact that three of the six closest contacts in this chart sit inside one group of three planets means most of what it has to say is said in the same register.

The record's second sentence holds two deaths and nothing in these ten planets contains either. Tubercular meningitis at thirty five is a disease. The death that followed it was a second person's, and a second person has a second chart, so this entry has no standing on it whatsoever and will not reach for one. Jupiter sits in mild friction with Uranus at nine hundredths of a degree, the tightest contact here, opportunity that costs stability, which the record gives nothing to test. He died in Paris on 24 January 1920, at thirty five. Mercury stood in easy contact with his natal Uranus at under a quarter of a degree that day and Neptune conjunct his natal Jupiter at half a degree. The Moon was new and eleven per cent lit.