Massimo Giuseppe Bonelli was born in Viterbo, Italy, in 1970. He studied at Sapienza University of Rome, earning a degree in Literature and specializing in Art History. He obtained his PhD in History and Conservation of Cultural Heritage from the University of Macerata, Italy. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and miscellaneous publications on Romanesque medieval sculpture in Italy, France, and Spain, and on 16th-century Italian art in relation to Flemish painting. 

He has also been the director of the Italian School of Madrid since 2020 and is an expert in medieval architectural sculpture and the influence of classical Latin and Greek texts in 16th-century Italian painting. Since 2014, he has directed Italian operas such as Verdi's La Traviata, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, Puccini's Tosca, Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, Pergolesi's La serva padrona, and Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda.