The Life of Claudio Monetio

Claudio Monetio was born in 1962 in a small town called Montepulciano, a medieval and Renaissance hill town in the Italian province of Siena in southern Tuscany. It is from here he draws his inspiration. He was an only child raised by a hard working parents. Most of his childhood was spent with his grandmother who loved to grow her own vegetables and make her own wine in the hills of Tuscany.

He loved to play the flute and wanted to grow up to be a musician. But when he was 16, his father became ill and Claudio was forced to help the family make ends meet. He became a delivery person, delivering vegetables and bread. Between deliveries he would draw scenes of Tuscany on the crates for fun. Customers could not help but comment on how beautiful his drawings were and wanted to keep the crates for themselves. Claudio insisted that the merchants need the crates back, but he would paint them a scene of their own that they could keep. And this was how he started painting...and eventually selling... his works. He was a natural, and his star was the countryside of Tuscany.