Commissioned works

The drawings of Sant’Elia produced for architects or for private clients inevitably bear the stamp of and reflect certain restrictions imposed by the commissions themselves, as well as the limits to available financial resources. He enjoyed relative freedom in the case of Villa Elisi, a building of modest proportions for an industrialist in Como which was based on a project submitted to the Competition for a Small Modern Villa as published in Milan in 1910. Other examples of works executed on commission include the headquarters of the Società dei Commessi in Como [Como Province Association of  Clerks in Trade and Industry] and the Caprotti funeral monument in Monza (1914), the only work, together with Villa Elisi, actually built during the architect’s lifetime. The commissioned works show us that the long design stage, documented by numerous sketches initially displaying much in the way of fascinating new ideas, was steadily toned down to formal late art-nouveau designs, clearly with the demands of the prevailing taste of the day in mind.

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