Mario Berta Battiloro | Venice: I am not making this up

Gold on its way to being beaten into a leaf seemingly lighter than air. Believe it or not, this leaf is still closer to the beginning than to the eventual end. This is merely the first step; these leaves have just undergone their first pounding (20 minutes under the tilt hammer) and now will be cut into smaller pieces and beaten again.

Marino Menegazzo is beating gold leaves on a traditional block of marble, and is sitting because wielding an 8-kilo (17 pounds) iron hammer standing up would massacre his back. Turning gold into gossamer requires from 1200 to 1800 blows of the hammer.

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.

Pure gold, leaf by leaf, seen as it is alloyed down to “white gold” — gold plus silver — in the center.

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 sign above his workshop/office/shop. (*Battiloro* means goldbeater.)

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.

His hammers (l to r) weigh 6, 3, 4, 8 kilos (13, 6, 8, 17 pounds). Pick up something that weighs 17 pounds and imagine doing anything with it besides putting it down immediately. And carefully.

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.

These are the leftovers. Bits of gold leaf that are sliced away from the edges of the perfectly-cut leaves are piled together, waiting their turn to be melted down and pounded again.

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”).

The gold is smelted at approximately 1750 C (3182 F). After smelting, the pure gold is poured into a form to cool as an ingot.

This gold has no idea what’s waiting for it.

The ingot rolled through the laminator sets out on the long road to gold leaf.

Each pass through the laminator results in a longer and thinner strip, the first phase of becoming a leaf.

He takes the long ribbon of gold and cuts off whatever size piece is destined for goldleafdom.

The rest he folds up and puts in the safe till he needs another piece.

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.

One gram of pure gold, circled in red. (One gram = 0,035274 of an ounce.)

One gram of gold beaten into 49 filmy-fine leaves.

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?

Menegazzo periodically checks the thinness (and the evenness) of the leaf. The nature of the light passing through it reveals how thin it is, or what more he needs to do. He can beat leaves so thin that he can obtain a thousand pieces from just 20 grams of gold. (Photo from his book on the workshop, I regret the quality here.)

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.

Marino Menegazzo: The last goldbeater