Emilio Monti

Emilio Monti was born in Milan in 1901 and died aged 80. He studied for his diploma at the Brera Accademia di Belle Arti where his teachers were Giannino Castiglioni, Giuseppe Graziosi and the painter Ambrogio Alciati. For 20 years he taught at the school of industrial design at Castello Sforzesco. A sculptor and medal maker, he collaborated for some 40 years with the Johnson company in Milan. He specialised in portraits which enabled him to photograph some of the most illustrious people of the time. Worth remembering, amongst many, is the medal dedicated to Enrico Forlanini (1937), the 1950 jubilee medal bearing the effigy of Pope Pius XII, the medal representing the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and one bearing the image of Diana. Of this image Velia Johnson wrote that an atmosphere of Theocretean idyll hovers around Diana, more nymph than goddess, beside her slender Hellenistic hound. In 1969 he worked with the FranklinMint to realise a series of medals illustrating scenes from the Bible. He has taken part in numerous exhibitions of sculpture and medallions in Italy and abroad. His works are in public and private collections.