For every “first,” there is a “last.” They come packaged together, kind of like up and down. Maybe you actually want your “up” to come down, so that makes you happy, but this particular “last” is serious. If you are seeking pleasant news today, you’ll have to look elsewhere. Sorry.
Slow-news-day stories from Venice occasionally bewail the shrinking population of the historic center (“real Venice” to me); the disappearing population of artisans, not so much. Venice’s fortunes were built not only on the cunning of merchants but the skills of the artisans who created whatever the people in the fancy houses wanted to sell. Now it’s 2025, and for an artisan to survive in Venice requires a fortitude and capacity for sacrifice that goes unnoticed by anybody except the tax collectors and landlords.
The result? The road to Going Out of Business sales. Two years ago, on April 20, 2023, Marta Artico wrote a report in La Nuova Venezia headlined: Venezia, in dieci anni hanno abbassato le saracinesche 4,000 artigiani. (“In ten years 4,000 artisans have closed up shop.” The statistics cover the metropolitan area, not just real Venice. But still.)
That’s bad enough, but what if an entire craft is slated to disappear? In the case of Marino Menegazzo, despite every effort, that is exactly what happened. Not in the distant past, but mere months ago.
Marino Menegazzo was the last man in Europe to beat gold leaf entirely by hand (I except the 20 minutes of the first beating by a 1926 tilt hammer, as similar hammers were in use centuries ago powered by water). And he didn’t beat only gold, but 17 various gold alloys.
So now the skill, sensitivity and experience that he has perfected in his lifetime is gone, along with that of the centuries and generations of goldbeaters that preceded him.
Before I proceed, I urge you to read the article I wrote about him that is linked above. His story up to a few years ago is all there, so no need to repeat it all here.
The “Mario Berta Battiloro” company was founded in 1926, and Marino had hoped to bring the family enterprise to its 100th anniversary. But no. The up has had to submit to its down. At its height (I refrain from referring to it as the “golden age”) the business had 14 workers producing 1,000 booklets of 10 to 25 gold leaves each every month and, in exceptional cases, even in a week. Impressive? In the 18th century there were some 340 goldbeating workshops in Venice.
Now Marino’s tools are silent, awaiting transfer to the National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, and a craft/skill/art that made Venice shine like the sun will no longer be part of the city’s greatness.
Many, even most, artisans have to grapple with the most basic challenges to their survival, from rent increases to shrinking markets, taxes, the cost of materials, and the occasional debt, a struggle that too often has led to the same mundane conclusion. But the craft of goldbeating deserves more than a “Hey, whatcha gonna do?” Gold leaf continues to be produced in many places around the world, but not like this. Not even close.
Marino Menegazzo managed to weather the effects of the pandemic, which blocked his customers for too long, and not all of them returned. But the failure to find an apprentice — there were some, but one by one they moved on — was followed by being compelled to sell his laboratory to pay debts, some reaching back to crises in 2007. (He kept ten workers on until 2015 because “they were part of the family”).
Losing the laboratory was the fatal step. He could certainly have kept going for at least a few more years if he’d been able to find a new one. Sound simple? Not in Venice. Because he works with flame, and has a few other technical requirements, he couldn’t move into just any old empty decrepit storeroom, and the search for an adequate new space was completely fruitless.
Appeals for assistance made to the city and the regional governments, and even to the diocese of Venice, were met either with silence or the kind of offers that are no better than none. Requests for meetings were ignored. A few foreigners seemed interested in coming to the rescue, but time was running out and there were no results. An artisan who in some other countries would be sustained as a Living National Treasure was left to his own devices. He wasn’t asking for favors, just a space! The Arsenal? Nope. A corner of the old ACTV yards at Sant’ Elena? Nope again.
So there you have it. There will be no more golden ribbons curling out of the laminator, no more leaves of gold patiently pounded to literal transparency. There will be no one who is capable of sensing the gold’s response to the winter fog or the summer drought and the heat and the pressure of his hammers.
Another piece of Venice falls away.
He is working with the heaviest hammer here. He must adjust the force and the rhythm to avoid overheating the gold. The two packets, or “cutches,” of mylar sheets are held steady by the green “shoder,” made of parchment.
Here he’s working with the lightest hammer. You may think you could handle the hammer, but could you keep track of perfectly counting every strike of it? Because that is crucial, and studies show that the capacity to concentrate is deteriorating under the effects of smartphones and the internet. Goldbeating resembles some form of meditation, with weightlifting added. Is that a thing?
After the first beating the leaves are cut into four pieces and interleaved again between sheets of mylar for the final beating. As you see, each leaf must line up exactly with the one before. I probably didn’t need to point that out. Notice the square lined notepaper nearby — it’s there to check alignments when needed. Again I state the obvious.
The final leaves have to be cut to the prescribed dimensions (there are many options). That’s where his wife and twin daughters, and an occasional helper, came in.
Eleonora Menegazzo assembling a “libretto,” or booklet, of the gold leaves as ordered. Like goldbeating, this also has a contemplative aspect, work aided by various tools including her perfect fingernails.
7 Comments
oh dear, i’m so sorry to hear this. we visited the workshop in 2023 and it was such a wonderful place. we were so impressed by the skills of the workers, the hammering process particularly. what a disappointment for the whole family. a great loss to the city.
Somewhere in the past 5 to 15 years I read an article about the last man (and his family) who operated the major Clock in Venice which had been there since clocks where keeping time. I don’t really bemoan these things – just feel a sense of amazement that they lasted as long as they did. That thought, kind of, overpowers the loss. Thanks from New England !
That’s a very pleasant way of looking at change. What makes certain changes especially bitter, however, is when they are imposed from outside, sometimes for what appear to be trivial or inconsequential motives, instead of arising from an inherent, organic reason. I don’t recall the details of the clock-maintainer’s family’s case (I recall that when I interviewed the son at the time he felt the change had been imposed), but Menegazzo’s closing was caused by factors not arising from the market, or his physical/mental/emotional capacity to continue, but for reasons that were resolvable — that is, finding a new laboratory space. The lack of an apprentice — Menegazzo said that it takes two years for an apprentice to reach the necessary skill — was probably not resolvable. But the unfathomable lack of interest on the part of entities that could have helped avoid this premature conclusion is what rankles. It is ludicrous that people who are ready to bemoan the loss of artisans, when such bemoaning seems appropriate for some sort of publicity, are often those who could, in fact, have intervened to prevent or slow that loss. All philosophers have searched for ways to accept hypocrisy, but none of them has found a way to make it palatable.
Hey, not just Venice: yesterday I was at the only clock repair shop in Bologna. Mr. Fini retired years ago, his daughter and her husband (who learned the trade from his father-in-law) took over. They will be shutting down at the end of the year. There will be nobody left to fix grandfather clocks, alarm clocks, elegant mantlepiece timepieces and the like It’s not a healthy job, there’s this constant smell of solvent (used to clean the clocks) in the workshop. But it’s a magic place, and when the big hand in on the 12, everything starts chiming. I’m bringing them all the clocks we have n Venice that need fixing, before the year runs out.
Beautiful, glorious even, to see this deeply rich shining tissue come into being. Sad that he is the last in Europe to do so manually. I was trying to imagine 14 beaters, 14 wife/daughter/apprentice stations cutting and applying….sweeping, melting, carrying away to buyers and sellers…. as the whole world sees so sad at the moment, I will dwell on Charles Reyburn’s perspective above: gratitude that it has lasted til now. Gratitude that you have been able to visit and document ( twice now, if I recall?) and let us enjoy…
For craftsman and artist, this seems like a worldwide phenomenon where to find a place to work that you can afford whether it be in Venice, Italy or where I live in Napa, California same problem everything is so dang expensive……
By the way, watching that young woman size the gold leaf so carefully and so beautifully every movement is like a ballet of fingers and so mesmerizing to watch
I was wondering why a local wealthy person wouldn’t be willing to furnish a studio space for this wonderful man to work
I wonder too — I wonder about just about everything these days — but I have no doubt that he made every conceivable effort to keep going. It’s entirely possible that local wealthy people, like the city government, care more about lots of other things. You may have noticed that you can’t force people to care about something that matters specifically to you. “What’s in it for me?” would be a logical question, and I have no idea what the answer could be. Pretty sure that “Nothing except the paltry rent” wouldn’t be too effective.