On 9 June 1941, on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, a young woman named Dorothy Leuthold flushed a small butterfly. Vladimir Nabokov described it the following year in the journal Psyche as a new species, Neonympha dorothea, and named it after her, noting that she had kicked up the first specimen. The male taken that day became the holotype, the single specimen to which the name stays tied for good. The species is now called Cyllopsis pertepida, and dorothea is one of its subspecies.
Like every holotype, that specimen carries a red label. The red label is the starting point of the exhibition opening at Rome's Museo Civico di Zoologia on 15 October. The photographer and curator is Francesco Sacco. The show is promoted by Roma Capitale's culture department and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali, the city's heritage authority, under the patronage of ARDE, the Rome Entomological Association, and ALI, the Italian Lepidopterological Association. Museum services are run by Zètema Progetto Cultura.

The project grew out of a Nabokov poem, "A Discovery", published in The New Yorker in 1943. According to the exhibition's press release it was written for the discovery of Neonympha dorothea. In it the writer calls himself godfather to an insect and its first describer, adding "I want no other fame". He then sets paintings, thrones and poems against the red label pinned beneath a small butterfly, and gives the label the win.
Nabokov, born in St Petersburg in 1899 and died in Montreux in 1977, is remembered above all for Lolita. He worked on butterflies from childhood throughout his life, above all on the Lycaenidae, the small blues. Between 1942 and 1948, the press release says, he was curator of the Lepidoptera collections at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.
The red label is a rule of taxonomy turned into an object. When a new species is described, one reference specimen, the type, is chosen and kept in a museum. Any later doubt about the name is settled by going back to that animal. The colour of the label picks it out at a glance from the rest of the collection.
The visit begins with three teaching panels, on red labels, on Linnaean nomenclature and on the number of species on the planet. A display box of type specimens follows. Then come Sacco's sixteen high-definition photographs, each 100 by 70 centimetres. Every caption gives the scientific name, the collecting site, the institution holding the specimen, the photographic technique and the magnification. Next to it hangs a copy of the original species description.

The central case holds Nabokov's works in Italian translation and two books on his entomology. A film, "Il dèmone di Vladimir Nabokov" (Vladimir Nabokov's daemon), accompanies the show, with readings by Fabio Traversa and camera work and editing by Jan Stöckel.
The exhibition runs until 15 November 2026, Tuesday to Sunday from 9 am to 7 pm, last entry one hour before closing, and is closed on Mondays. The museum is at Via Ulisse Aldrovandi 18. A combined museum and exhibition ticket costs 11.50 euros, 6.50 reduced. Entry is free for residents of Rome and its metropolitan area with proof of residence, for MIC card holders and for the categories set by current pricing rules. Information and bookings on +39 060608, daily 9 am to 7 pm, and at museocivicodizoologia.it and museiincomuneroma.it.
The first dorothea does not carry its red label in Rome. According to Nabokov's 1942 paper the holotype was deposited at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Sacco's photographs show other types, kept in other museums, under the same label.

A micromoth in a museum collection, wings spread, with its three labels. The first gives place and collector, "Lazio, Riofreddo", dated 6-9-41, "Cerruti leg.". The second gives the host plant, "Popul. alba", the white poplar. The third, in red, reads "Paratypus L. cerrutiella Hartig". A paratype is one of the specimens in the series used to describe a species, alongside the holotype.
Credit: photograph supplied by the Museo Civico di Zoologia, Rome, for the exhibition "Biodiversità ritratta" 

References
Roma Capitale, Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali (Rome's municipal heritage authority), Zètema Progetto Cultura, "Al Museo Civico di Zoologia di Roma la mostra Biodiversità ritratta. Tipi da cartellino rosso. L'immortalità secondo Vladimir Nabokov", press release, Rome, 13 October 2026.
Nabokov Vladimir, "Some New or Little Known Nearctic Neonympha", Psyche, 49, 3–4, 61–80, September–December 1942, Cambridge Entomological Club, open access. http://psyche.entclub.org/49/49-061.html
Nabokov Vladimir, "A Discovery", The New Yorker, 1943 (the press release gives 15 May 1943); later collected in Poems (1959) and in Poems and Problems, McGraw-Hill, 1969.
Turismo Roma, event page "Biodiversità Ritratta. Tipi da cartellino rosso". https://turismoroma.it/es/node/178048

*Board Member, SRSN (Roman Society of Natural Science)
Past Editor-in-Chief Italian Journal of Dermosurgery