ROME – At Palazzo Velli in Trastevere, the American artist Salvatore Catalano is presenting ITALIANI, a month long exhibition that explores Italian identity through portraiture. Organized by NYC Culture Club with ITSLIQUID Group, curated by Clayton Calvert, and sponsored by Goldman Sachs Gives, the show opens on October 1 and runs through October 30.

The exhibition assembles portraits of figures who shaped Italy’s cultural, political and scientific life. Renaissance masters such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael appear alongside opera legends like Verdi, Pavarotti and Bocelli, film icons Sophia Loren and Federico Fellini, and writers Italo Calvino and Luigi Pirandello. Catalano also highlights women whose visibility in history has often been diminished, including the astrophysicist Margherita Hack, the Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini, astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

Catalano began ITALIANI as a project focused on women overlooked in official narratives. His research into Italian history and literature gradually expanded the scope into a collective portrait of Italians who embody creativity, resilience and cultural influence. The works are finely drawn and psychologically probing, mixing the structure of classical portraiture with the sensitivity of a contemporary hand.

The artist, who works between New York and Florence, has long been interested in how memory is shaped through images. Here, portraiture is not presented as static record but as celebration and critique. His subjects are shown as individuals rather than icons, marked by subtle contrasts of light and shadow and by a rhythm of line that recalls Renaissance precedent while opening to a modern reading.

Palazzo Velli, in one of Rome’s most historic neighborhoods, provides a fitting stage. The exhibition runs Tuesday through Sunday with an opening reception on October 1 at 6 p.m. By bringing together centuries of figures,from Leonardo to Cristoforetti, Catalano uses ITALIANI to suggest that Italy’s story is never finished. It is told again in every face we choose to remember, and in every life that art finally makes visible.