Mediolanum is the pseudonym of the artist Milan, who took the name from the ancient city on the site of modern Milan, Italy, where Leonardo da Vinci once lived. His anatomically themed digital paintings, exploring what he calls the full spectrum of human nature, draw on Leonardo's anatomical drawings and on Jean-Michel Basquiat's use of Gray's Anatomy as reference.
Milan began creating digital art in 2020 during COVID-19 lockdowns, after discovering he could collage and distort images in Photoshop without needing to draw. He had already been reading about Ethereum and blockchain technology in 2019, and minted his first NFT on Rarible before finding his voice on Foundation. After graduating college in 2021, he gave himself two years to make a living from art rather than take a marketing job, a bet that paid off. A year after his first Photoshop experiments, he minted Martyrdom on Foundation, the work that marked the start of his sustained exploration of anatomy and human nature.
That exploration produced works such as I'm Only Human, an anatomical torso with its organs, bones and nervous system exposed, and Accepting All My Flaws, which doubles as his profile picture. Milan describes himself as coming from “the school of entropy”, believing the universe is fundamentally random and finding that belief liberating rather than depressing. He has also cited the designer Virgil Abloh as an inspiration for working across creative fields beyond digital art, including fashion and film. His work has been shown at Art Basel Miami, on Times Square billboards, and in exhibitions in Japan and Italy.
Milan's profile on 6529 lists him as a Meme Artist, enabled in June 2024.On November 8, 2024, he created Diamond-Hearted #295 for The Memes.That same day, his work was included in “Hive Mind”, a group exhibition staged by Hildabroom Mgmt, SuperRare and Colonna Contemporary.
