On one side, the celebrated marble bust of Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi — her gracefulness beautifully captured in its neoclassical pose by Antonio Canova. A regal profile sculpted for eternity, yet interrupted by a minimal, violent gesture. A band veils her gaze, transforming the powerful, cultured protagonist of her time, from icon to symbol of the systematic erasure of female presence from historical narratives. Opposing, or perhaps mirroring this noble and silent face, is the mysterious visage carved at the heart of the labyrinth on the façade of Lucca’s Cathedral of San Martino. This worn stone face, consumed by time, is pulled from anonymity by the artist and repositioned at the centre of a visual inquiry. Here, celebrated identity confronts erosion, obliterated legacies, and the absence of memory. In a refined play of contrasts — marble and stone, defined features and worn ones, the signature of the artist and the anonymity of a medieval stonemason — the work challenges the mechanisms of representation and invites us to re-read the legacy of the city of Lucca with new eyes, interrogating what is missing from its symbology. Within this frame, art becomes an instrument of rewriting and revelation — a tribute to the female figures buried by time, who return here—powerful and fragile—to reclaim their place in history and in our collective consciousness.

In this diptych, a woman kneels upon a chequered floor, evoking the interior of a church. Her joined hands, caught between prayer and surrender, release glimmering mirrors—shards of reflection scattered like lost relics. The image is symbolic. These mirrors are truths no longer containable, identities which shatter when gazed upon by the observer. Alongside, three overlapping Polaroids depict a minimal fragment of the façade of San Martino. Not the grandeur of the entire architecture, but a deconstructed detail. Together, these two visions portray a wounded spirituality, a feminine identity poised between invocation and abandonment. The woman does not beg, does not offer herself: she removes herself from the role, and in doing so enacts a gesture of rebellion. The diptych becomes an act of iconic resistance, a rite denouncing History’s failure to hold space for those who have lost their essence. If the previous diptych sought identity in carved signs, here we turn inward — to the very point where loss becomes gesture, and beauty fractures to say what words can no longer communicate.

There is no death in there. Only the fear of those who look at love and cannot bear its beauty. — out of a dream left unfinished by Lucrezia Buonvisi

The figure of Lucrezia Buonvisi, a noblewoman of 16th-century Lucca, resurfaces as a fractured voice, a living memory just beneath the surface. A black-and-white Polaroid, veiled in golden transparency, seals her face. It is not gold that adorns, but an aura suspended between sanctity and sentence, between votive panel and human face. Next to it, an ivory and gold striped fabric evokes ceremonial vestments — the textile as a symbol of roots and identity. Below, a Polaroid portrays a closed door resting on the cloth — a threshold never crossed, an entrance to a freedom never granted, a denied exit, a liminal space where every unchosen fate unfolds. At the centre, a fragment of the fresco that adorns the dome of Santa Caterina in Lucca: a figure suspended on a cloud, an ecstatic vision and forgotten martyr. An image that returns Lucrezia to the sky, away from the convent’s dark chambers —without redemption. This triptych is a visual requiem for what was stolen. Lucrezia Buonvisi, condemned by history for love and escape, returns here as a symbol of all women silenced, imprisoned by roles, forgotten on the margins. Let not silence become your prison. Be voice, be choice, be freedom.

This is the place where pain takes shape. And you stand there, silent, before a truth that has no answers.

She was guardian of a city, a reflected image of Paris, yet chose the silence of night to withdraw, freeing Lucca from the burden of an impending invasion. A queen’s gesture, where renunciation became the highest act of sovereignty and grace.

A luminous fragment of rediscovered history. A woman of power, too long confined to the shadows, now resurfaces as a radiant figure, giving voice to a silenced identity. The Polaroid, a fragile and precious keeper of suspended moments, framed by a thin leaf of gold, is not mere ornamentation but a reborn scar: a mark of existence reclaiming its place in time. The pearls are ornaments of an undying splendour, delicate yet powerful remnants of a feminine ambition that still endures. Elisa emerges as a vibrant presence, suspended between myth and reality, between the imperial aura of a French noblewoman and the tangible legacy of her deeds—like the Ducal Palace she envisioned as a mirror of Paris, a symbol of governance and vision. In the second diptych, the transparency of the envelope reveals a vintage postcard: a noblewoman in flamboyant attire, feathers and colours evoking an imperial dream, placed beside another postcard—depicting the Ducal Palace—an emblem of power and grandeur. Elisa’s imprint is unmistakable. In this dialogue of images and symbols, Elisa becomes an icon of a memory that resists and reclaims, with grace and resolve, her rightful place in history. Her image, embroidered with splendour and delicacy, becomes a manifesto. A narrative where past and present blur, and memory comes alive—restoring dignity to a feminine history woven from ambition, struggle, and resilience.

Stone guards what time tries to erase. The sea returned to her the wonder of herself, and the sky offered her a place to dream. Maria Luisa di Borbone, Duchessa di Lucca

Maria Luisa of Bourbon, Duchess of Lucca, lives again through an image that does not succumb to time but questions it. The Polaroid, sealed with wax, becomes a contemporary relic. The handwritten inscription, partly faded and in Italian, entwines her life with a history that endures—even when its outlines blur. The transparent envelope holds fragments of a past that remains vividly irretrievable. A fragile yet tenacious tool of memory transmission. The stone of the monument does not celebrate; it bears witness to an era. This work evokes a stratified feminine memory: political, public, private, and intimately veiled. Maria Luisa appears as a figure steeped in power, grace, and silent suffering—caught between what remains and what time has tried, in vain, to erase.

Beauty that dared to defy time, and was marked forever by longing and the shadow of fate. Lucida Mansi

Lucida Mansi is a historical figure cloaked in mystery and tragedy—more legend than woman, more symbol than story. Her beauty, passed down in a tangle of myth and truth, becomes the fulcrum of a reflection on desire, vanity, and the condemnation of time. The Polaroid captures her essence like a portrait rediscovered in a drawer sealed for centuries. Her face, crossed by a golden weave over her eyes, does not look— it allows itself to be seen, or perhaps slips away from the gaze. A handwritten phrase, spare yet luminous, opens a space of suspension: "Echo of an immortal desire." In the second diptych, a transparent envelope preserves the essence of a beauty unwilling to die. Images and a fragment of ivory silk. A remnant of a gown, caught in the folds of history—a textile memory evoking trade routes and the refined opulence of the Mansi family. Timeworn silk becomes the emblem of what lingers: no longer the object of desire, but its afterglow. In this diptych, beauty becomes absence — not celebration, but reflection. Not damnation, but testimony. Lucida Mansi emerges as a timeless icon, imprisoned by the thirst for eternity, marked by the pitiless fate of passing time. Even in her tragic end, she lives on — and still captivates.

The Mansi family’s fabrics hold the breath of an era where opulence was woven into every thread, and vanity danced with eternity—silks from the East, golden brocades, and damasks as deep as the velvet of a private stage, each fold whispering secrets once breathed within the chambers of a vanished splendour.

If hope does not deceive me, soon will come the day when my memory will be joyful — and it comforts my heart

A luminous figure of Neoclassical Italy, Amarilli Etrusca—stage name of Teresa Bandettini—was far more than a poetic prodigy. She was a pioneer, a free and learned woman in a time when the world offered women little room to speak. Acclaimed dancer, inspired improviser, celebrated across Europe’s literary salons, she united the language of the body with that of the word. Her memory is reassembled here in two visions: in the first, a Polaroid captures her holding an umbrella adorned with golden glitter, surrounded by white roses—symbols of grace, fragility, and discipline. The roses, carefully applied, evoke her famed poetic “flowers”: impromptu verses, intense and ephemeral, now blossoming anew in the matter of the image. Beside it, a phrase surfaces like a promise of survival—against time and forgetting. The second diptych guides us into the epistolary weave of an intellectual life in constant dialogue with the literary elite of her time—Monti, Alfieri, Pindemonte. A transparent envelope holds another image: Teresa in a dancer’s gown, seated with composure and grace. Behind her, a handwritten postcard: a trace of correspondence, of connection, of intellectual affinity. Here too, intimacy is the key. One must listen—to read in the signs the life that once was, and that still speaks to us. This work does not merely remember: it evokes, preserves, and offers reparation. Teresa Bandettini is no longer just a memory: she is a voice that endures, a gesture that still enchants.

An absence that continues to live like a breath held in.

A fleeting Polaroid captures a young woman — perhaps shielded only by her innocence — adorned with translucent drops like dew, perhaps all that remains of weeping. Traces of ancient sorrow, crystallised in memory. Ilaria, marked by grace and an untimely end — a wife and mother — rendered eternal in stone, yet as weightless as a thought resisting the passage of time. The instant photograph, fragile by nature, defies time and preserves remembrance. In the second diptych, a worn sheet of paper, yellowed by time and enclosed in a transparent sleeve, holds an image that conjures an intimate time, of motherhood and death, of life given and life taken. The body portrayed does not ask to be seen, yet speaks a story interrupted, awaiting completion. Ilaria del Carretto died giving birth to her child, leaving behind love, mystery, and silence. Her tale, wrapped in legend, had slumbered beneath a veil of idealisation. And yet, every day, women's hands brush the sculpted features of her face, as if searching — in marble — for hope. This work is a gesture of love. A humble attempt to mend what time has torn. To return Ilaria to her own light.

Fragments of hope in a sleeping world

The image of Saint Zita is not merely iconic — it is a sign of transcendence born of humility. In her, the everyday gesture becomes prayer, and toil transforms into offering. The small metal crosses applied to the surface recall medieval iconography and a militant spirituality. They do not merely evoke martyrdom but signal a path of feminine resistance — a faith embodied through the body, through service, through care. Gold becomes the halo of devotion. The handwritten word “humility” echoes a private prayer, intimate and radiant. Enclosed in a transparent envelope, the Polaroid contains a sacred image adorned with the crown of thorns — a reference to Saint Gemma Galgani, another mystic from Lucca who embraced Christ’s suffering as a path of absolute love. The crown, symbol of spiritual sacrifice, intertwines with the miracle of Saint Zita, who turned bread into flowers — a sign of daily charity. Thus, the two saints reflect each other: Saint Zita, servant and saint; Saint Gemma, virgin and stigmatic. Their destinies converge across the centuries in a holiness lived through smallest acts, in perseverance, in everyday choices. Zita transforms labour into grace. In the gold that marks her and the crosses that pierce her, we glimpse the essence of an embodied spirituality. Her image — fragile yet powerful — restores a sacredness that lights the way and offers hope.

I carry with me the courage to speak what has been silenced, to honour every woman who has resisted — and still resists.

I carry with me the courage to speak what has long been silenced — to honour every woman who has resisted, and who still resists. The figure portrayed in this Polaroid is myself. And yet, it is not a self-portrait. Through this image, I become the voice of all those forgotten women — erased, silenced, unnamed. My figure gives shape to what no longer has a name. The Polaroid, adorned with gold leaf and glittering fragments, creates a striking contrast between the fragility of the moment and the solidity of memory that flows through it. The golden details are not embellishments; they are signs of survival — and they shine. In the second diptych, an old postcard, yellowed with age and kept in a transparent envelope. Handwritten words, postal stamps, the paper’s creases — all speak of a time that feels distant, yet still concerns us. This fragile, living message is offered to the viewer as a trace to be deciphered, a story suspended in time. The layering of materials — plastic, paper, dust, writing, gold, sparkle — constructs an intimate map. Each layer suggests a personal and emotional journey. My image carries the courage to speak what was suppressed — to honour every woman who has endured and still endures. The photograph becomes relic, record, fragile object and sacred artefact. An act of reclamation, of revelation.

My words are stars, scattered across the infinite night of memory and time.

Photographic diptychs – Polaroids, collage, newspaper clippings, 2025 Teresa Bandettini is not an exception — she is a revolution. Through the force of her genius, she broke the boundaries of her era. A dancer, poet, improviser, she was the first woman admitted to the Arcadian Academy — a milestone marking the end of male cultural monopoly. The Polaroid, framed by fragments of newspaper, becomes a symbol of this dual legacy: the prestige she attained and the strain of a memory at risk of fading. The black and gold surrounding the image evoke the tension between oblivion and celebration. In the second diptych, the transparent envelope holds further archival fragments — a testimony that Teresa was not an isolated exception. History, while rarely acknowledging female merit, has always been shaped by its presence. “My words are stars, scattered across the infinite night of memory and time.” Words as light, as rebellion — a call to finally see Teresa — and with her, all women — as protagonists of history. This diptych is a cry against invisibility. A call to recognise a truth long buried.

We are light ash, dust caressed by the wind, a subtle and fragile trace of an ephemeral passage.

We are light ash, dust caressed by the wind — subtle, fragile traces of an ephemeral passage. A dusty Polaroid, marked by time, reveals a delicate yet vibrant image of Teresa Bandettini, 18th-century poet and improviser. The veil of dust that coats its surface heightens its suspended quality — poised between past and present. Ash becomes a tangible trace of a life at risk of fading into silence. A golden crack runs across the face with a near-ritual delicacy. It highlights the wound, transforming it into a mark of resistance and rebirth. Beside it, a phrase evokes the transience of life and the fragile nature of remembrance. In the second diptych, a transparent sleeve holds the Polaroid shrouded in ash, while a sumptuous damask tapestry, woven in the refined Lucchese tradition, tells of the social fabric of the time. It once lined the drawing rooms where words, glances, and destinies crossed paths — often without ever being recorded.

Inspired by the textile culture of the late eighteenth century—when velvets, silks, and damasks wove together poetry and prestige within Italian salons—this fabric evokes the world of Teresa Bandettini. Its exquisite weaves, often crafted in Lucca or Florence, formed the silent backdrop to improvised verse and refined conversation.

A fragment preserved through time, where memory allows us to breathe and gold grants us rebirth.

The Polaroid — fragile, immediate — enters into dialogue with the historical iconography of the carte de visite, evoking nineteenth-century portraits in which identity was imprinted as a seal of memory and social belonging. In this visual and symbolic overlay, the portrayed woman becomes a presence suspended between myth and reality, both persistent and elusive. The bouquet of wildflowers she clutches to her chest feels like a gesture of devotion — or perhaps a gift offered to another realm. The gold traced across her eyes and adorning the flowers is no mere embellishment: it is a scar, a testimony to a wound transfigured. Within the diptych, the photograph enclosed in the transparency of a plastic sleeve becomes a reliquary, containing also an aged photograph, faded by time, in which the same woman, seen in profile, holds white carnations in her hands. Her hair resembles snow, and her skin appears almost translucent — evoking an ethereal aura. In the image beside it, an antique photographic card bearing a photographer’s advertisement, along with a handwritten sheet, becomes a fragment of the past — not begging to be revealed, but rather, simply understood. The dried flowers, muted in tone, speak of a metamorphosis in which what withers does not die, but changes form. This composition is a tribute to the resilience of women erased or transformed by time. In them, memory is not denied but redeemed. The gold becomes an emblem of rebirth — as delicate as the scent of spring.

Suspended between the voices of those who condemn and the silence of those who dare not understand, I bear on my face the marks of a power feared and denied.

Suspended between the voices of those who condemn and the silence of those who dare not understand, she bears upon her face the marks of a power both feared and denied. The figure of the witch emerges like a shadow from the margins of history. Polissena — an ancient name, soaked in foreboding and verdicts — stands as an icon of otherness, of knowledge, of resistance. She is not merely the persecuted woman, but the face of a power that unsettles precisely because it refuses to be tamed. Her profile, retraced in a fine line of gold, is far more than ornament — it is a scar engraved into the image. Gold — symbol of sacredness and illumination — here becomes the mark of an ancient, unhealed pain that still aches. Silver pearls, placed like tears upon the surface of the Polaroid, glisten between skin and soul. The photograph is held inside a sleeve, as if memory must be shielded from decay. Beside it, a postcard from a small village in the Lucchesia region gestures towards both an inner and collective geography: physical and symbolic terrains where distance, solitude, and marginalisation have played out — and still do. The tulle, delicate, carries the weight of the unspoken: a veil that conceals nothing, allowing glimpses to emerge. Its ageing speaks of memory’s fragility — how, if left unpreserved, it corrodes and transforms. In this context, Polissena is not redeemed. Her existence — that which was written at history’s edges — is at last brought into the light. Radiant and untouchable in her ambiguity, she surrenders herself to the gaze as an apparition: a symbol of those who neither wish — nor are able — to be forgotten.

She whispers ancient truths, like a quiet breath, an invitation to cherish the hope of being understood, embraced, and truly seen.

Ursolina the Red is revealed in a Polaroid streaked with golden pearls. Her face emerges as an echo of all those women who were heard too late — or never truly heard at all. The golden pearls, like alchemical signs, reflect the possibility of comprehension. Here, time no longer runs linear: it gathers, coils, shelters. The black that envelops part of the image is the imposed darkness of history — a shadow that hides but does not erase. Beside her, a Polaroid enclosed in a transparent sleeve alongside newspaper clippings, torn words, fragments of narrative. One speaks of a woman who “helps divine” — as though the past might still unveil what the present dares not name. In this portrait, the woman becomes a symbol of unresolved duality: the power of knowledge and the punishment it provoked. Golden gems, like amulets or tears, tell a tale of pain linked to ancient wisdom. This photograph speaks of a time when feminine thought was relegated to superstition — yet now returns, resplendent, as an act of resistance and reclamation.

She is a lost icon — faceless, yet radiant. Her absence gleams like a sacred wound. “The Forgotten Icon”

An altered Polaroid in which gold does not decorate, but veils — and reveals — a face erased by time, transfigured into absence. It is in this fragmented icon that the missing becomes the very centre of the vision. The denied face is the face of all — forgotten, concealed, erased from history. A worn, fragile postcard depicts a small village in the Garfagnana — a place enduring through time, bearing witness to roots, to mothers, to dormant yet undying communities. A trace of forgotten belonging. The small booklet on magnetism, like a rediscovered object, introduces an invisible yet essential force: the oscillation between attraction and repulsion, between memory and oblivion. Much like memory itself — intermittent, pulsing, made of absences that call, silences that whisper stories too distant to grasp. All these elements — the Polaroid, the postcard, the booklet — are encased within a transparent plastic sleeve. This container does not merely protect — it distances. It becomes a boundary between what we may touch and what we may only intuit. A reliquary of what has been lost. A gesture of preservation that endures. This composition is a small sentimental archive. The lost identity is no longer a void — it is a glimmer. A dream no one can capture.

A faint trace of what has been buried (…) Fantasma of the Garfagnana

A figure emerges from a worn Polaroid, as though slowly surfacing from a forgotten era. Time has laid down its layers, yet has not succeeded in erasing her presence entirely. The image appears corrupted, almost faded by the very silence that kept it, and yet something endures: a mark, a voice. The application of gold leaf over the eyes is not decorative—it obscures the gaze to render it eternal. It is a radical gesture, a luminous wound that speaks of what cannot be seen but only intuited: the memory of women erased from history, their interrupted vision, their longing to be remembered never fully extinguished. This piece is enclosed in a transparent sleeve—preserving and distancing at once. A fragile relic. An image of an architecture bearing the remnants of ancient geometry, like scars that have forgotten their origin.

Every moment is a heartbeat, a held breath. The face is poised, the gaze turned elsewhere. There is a stern elegance in a body that refuses to yield, that continues to struggle between light and shadow, yet holds within itself a sea of emotions. In a play of transparencies, where the veil both conceals and reveals, everything freezes in an unstable balance. The choice is a moment, yet it feels eternal. It is life moving forward. "In this text, the figure of the Boogeyman is reinterpreted through a female lens, invoking the myth with awareness and respect for its multiple cultural meanings."

The marble stands as witness to an ancient legend, keeper of the tensions dwelling within our darkest self, fragmented between light and shadow.

This diptych offers an intimate and fragmented gaze into feminine identity. The use of black and white enhances the timeless nature of the subject. The Polaroid portrait captures an elusive profile, an image suspended in time, immersed in grazing light that caresses the skin and sculpts its essence. The gentle blur does not distract—it envelops, suggesting a reality that fades and dissolves. An invitation to look beyond the surface. The gesture of a hand, the posture of the legs, a glossy floor and a flower in mosaic—everything speaks in a subtle and restless language. The body tells its story without words, stretched across a floor traced with lines and curves. The bare legs become a metaphor for freedom. There is an elegance in the pain, a tension in the pose, a wounded sweetness in the way the figure withdraws. Thus, the body tells us what was once loved, feared, forgotten. This diptych is not merely a portrait—it is an invitation to look deeper: to question what lies in the shadows, in the details, in that fragile balance between revelation and mystery.

On her path, dew and rust intertwine

At the heart of the Church of Santa Caterina, the minimalist and intimate installation transforms the space into the illusion of a classical harmony rooted in memory. Fourteen black and white Polaroids, enclosed in transparent sleeves, hang from a golden thread marking the chapel's entrance. Each image contains fragments of lives suspended in time. A faded Madonna, magnificent in her decay, presides over the scene with the expression of one who has seen all and could save none. An icon of love and compassion, her unwavering gaze embraces the suspended images in this sanctuary, where the warmth of God’s welcome stands in stark contrast to the fragile transience of human existence. She too is a relic. A witness to an ancient sorrow. Those who behold her share in the dream she holds in silence. Surrounding her, twelve red roses—not floral offerings, but stigmata. The transparent, glossy surfaces interact with the church's light, creating reflections and shadows. The light animates the images, rendering them ethereal, while the reflections prompt viewers to question what lies behind each face. The light reveals. And offers hope. It transforms the gaze of the observer into an evolving experience—like the shifting connection between memory and the stories told. The golden thread stretches like an invisible, unbreakable bond, a reminder that each story belongs to a wider horizon. The images seem to float—souls in suspension between the earthly and the spiritual. Their unstructured, non-hierarchical arrangement suggests the equal worth of every life, regardless of historical or personal context. In the background, a frescoed wall, worn by time, becomes a witness in turn—its own history intertwining with that of the images. Art, in this chapel, does not console. It does not redeem. It does not accompany. Here, art scratches, reveals, interrogates. It asks us to look. It invites us to remain. And those who look, from this moment on, are no longer mere spectators. They are witnesses. They are part of it. And they can no longer pretend not to know.

The work appears as a deconstructed diptych: black and white constructs a dialectic between negative and positive, between presence and absence. A sacred time implodes. Space becomes a mirror: memory on the left, ritual on the right. The same gesture, the same place, a single wound crossing time and its ruins. On the left, light has withdrawn, leaving only its ghostly trace. On the right, what remains of the light after it has burned everything. The installation inhabits a chapel — relic of a disused sacred space. Below, a kneeling figure and a red veil. It is not ornament, but trace, blood. The clasped hands, the fallen mirrors, speak of the shattering of identity, the sacred, and the human. The photographs — imprisoned in plastic sleeves, stitched, suspended — float like souls. Bodies, faces, stories wrapped and wavering between testimony and disappearance. Fragments never spoken, held between lips and stomach. Interrupted stories still pleading to be heard. Every face is a composed wound, every gaze a dismantled domestic altar, reassembled in the void. At the centre, a distant and silent Madonna stands on a pedestal. Above, the statue of Charity — a double female figure, fragile and proud. It is a Madonna who does not offer comfort, but points. She watches. She withdraws. Her hand holds a heart, yet it is an interrupted gesture, and within that interruption an entire world opens. That gesture — doubled in the diptych — is almost Berninian: an emotional tremor, a withheld ecstasy. In the image on the right, the light grows warmer, but the feeling cools. The heart reappears, identical yet dissimilar. Now it is near, in the foreground. It is emptied of its salvific power: it is memory, it is suspension, and it hurts. The small opening at the bottom right is a point of access and of refusal. A door that closed too soon. An unheard confessional, symbol of trauma. Within it vibrates the dark heart of the work: what was said and ignored, what was asked and never received. An obsessive detail. The architecture of a place that has seen, and now remains silent. The diptych stages a duality: the mystical, rarefied dimension of apparition and the documentary one, buried under centuries of dust. It is an ostension without miracle. Here, faith is not invoked. Listening is demanded. Memory is requested. In the end, that heart does not represent salvation, but the stubborn will not to forget. A gesture of love for all the women who have left a mark on our community, despite history’s repeated attempts to erase them. This work does not seek to console. It seeks to remind us that memory is a ritual act, and that certain altars never cease to call.