COMMISSION #19 ELISA MONTESSORI
Il Melzi Scientifico, first published by Antonio Vallardi in 1894, is a landmark of Italian publishing. Reprinted numerous times over the years and now a collector’s item, it is an illustrated dictionary comprising entries on ancient and modern geography, history, biographies of important figures from all periods, literature, the fine arts, and mythology.
In short, it offers a compendium of different fields of knowledge and allows one—as with any book with an encyclopedic vocation—to lose oneself among its pages, imagining journeys and encounters, and to discover correspondences between entries—and therefore between things—that would otherwise remain far apart.
Elisa Montessori (Genoa, 1931) consulted the entry on Giunone and copied its definition onto a sheet of Giunone drawing paper. For the artist, transcribing a text is part of her practice of drawing and painting: it is a way of looking more closely at what one reads, processing its content in order to make it one’s own. At times, it is also an act of care, because through our own handwriting it reactivates something that would otherwise remain tied to a distant time and a specific place, bringing it back into the present.
La Iuno The Iuno that celebrates the 2026 solstice is a woman who protects and admonishes. Her face turns to gold, like stone illuminated by the summer sun at sunset, and blossoms because the feminine nature is capable of embracing metamorphosis and transformation. As in her recent drawings, presented in her latest solo exhibition in Rome, the artist once again explores the deep memory that connects the female body to the elements: “we have a vegetal nature, an animal nature, a mineral nature: we belong to the world in all these forms,” she reminds us.
Giunone, 2026, courtesy the artist and Monitor Rome / Lisbon / Pereto.
Elisa Montessori (Genoa, 1931) studied Literature at the University of Rome, where she has lived and worked for most of her career. Over the course of more than six decades, she has developed a highly distinctive artistic language centred on drawing, writing, and the poetic transformation of everyday materials. Her work has been presented in numerous major exhibitions, including the 40th Venice Biennale (Aperto '82/Tempo, 1982) and the 53rd Venice Biennale (Making Worlds, 2009). Significant solo exhibitions include Omaggio a Ingeborg Bachmann at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (1993); When the Sign Becomes Sound at the Museum Laboratory of Contemporary Art (MLAC), Sapienza University of Rome (1999); Shanghai Blues at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Rome (2006); and Hybrid Books at the Biblioteca Angelica – Galleria Angelica in Rome (2007), where she exhibited around one hundred artist's books, notebooks, sketchbooks, and albums.