This noble and ancient profession – already practiced with skill in ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages – also attracted the attention of Leonardo Da Vinci.
The Genius, as he walked the streets of the city, could not help but notice the intense activity of the Florentine goldbeating workshops, with which Florence teemed in the 1400s, or the exquisite manual work of artisans engaged in the production of precious metal sheets for covering silk threads and leaves for decoration of wood and monuments.
Being the great scientist that he was, Leonardo da Vinci seized the moment, honed his subtle wit, and went to work. The result was the design, towards the end of the fifteenth century, of a highly ‘innovative’ machine for the times: a hammer capable of reducing the thickness of a sheet of gold from 500 to 30 microns. That machine at the forefront of science, containing some technical principles still in use, was reproduced on the basis of the drawing by Leonardo, estimated around 1490, and is now part of the Leonardo Museum in Vinci, dedicated to the work of one of the finest and multi-faceted minds of humanity.
On the completion of the machine also collaborated technicians from Giusto Manetti Battiloro SpA, one of the oldest goldbeating companies in the world, renowned worldwide for its versatility, precision and passion of the work. In a word, for its excellence.
The company was founded in 1820 by Luigi Manetti, who took over one of the many goldbeating shops in Via Pescioni in the heart of Florence, which was then moved to Via Ponte alle Mosse by his son Giusto. These brought national visibility and reputation to the brand, which became Giusto Manetti Battiloro, and his son Adolfo was able to maintain the strong identity of the company. Thus the “male labour crisis” of the First World War was overcome , and the company subsequently came to know its greatest glory between the two world wars, employing more than 200 workers, an impressive workforce, which gave impetus to a constant and increasing mechanization process. This led to the spread of the reputation of the company among customers in Europe and America, which is still shining brightly, just like a leaf of gold or silver.
Visiting the headquarters of Giusto Manetti Battiloro SpA, in Via Tosca Fiesoli, Campi Bisenzio, you cannot help but be impressed by the unique style of the products, the care, almost to the point of obsession, of the processing steps that lead to the creation of a leaf of gold, light as a feather. The time needed is long, a delicate processes, making use of machines designed and produced locally: from the creation of ingots through smelting – using an alloy of gold and other metals (silver, copper, palladium or platinum) – the rolling of the ingot, the cutting of the resulting gold ribbon to the spectacular beating performed by the automatic iron hammers, working like crazed pistons.
The leaf is now ready to be cut: this is the longest phase, carried out by experts who finish off the leaves with a twin-blade knives, ready to be finally packed in small booklets of tissue paper.
“Doing the work of the family is very special and exciting”, Lorenzo, Angelica and Bonaccorso Manetti tell us, who, with their siblings and cousins, continue a long tradition of craftsmanship in the family’s seventh generation. “We consider the fact that it is a family business a major strength for the company. Our business is divided into two sectors that have parallel roots: the purely ‘historical’ sector, related to gold leaf used for restoration, and the more recent one we might call ‘decorative’, reserved for the industrial design of glass, wood and marble. Some principles were those of the time of Leonardo, and we think that even today gold is beaten by hand in China, but innovation plays a crucial role in our standards in terms of not only quality and quantity, but also the variety of the range, which currently stands at 400 different types of leaf produced by us…. “
With the new factory, two branches in Spain and Poland, and 130 employees, Giusto Manetti Battiloro SpA is a reality which is at the same time both entrepreneurial and ‘artistic’; well-established in the global market. Just think of some famous works in which Manetti has collaborated in the field of restoration and decoration, the Florentine trademark: the gates of Buckingham Palace, the rooms of the Royal Palaces of Versailles and Caserta, the dome of the Invalides Basilica in Paris, the state rooms of Windsor Castle, the altarpiece of Santa Maria of Aragon in Vicenza. Not only these, but also the Fenice Theatre in Venice, the Palace of Catherine the Great and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.
New solutions for the application of gold leaf are being tried and promoted: “This is to defend ourselves from the competition and to continually bring the use of gold leaf up to date.” Those two crossed hammers on the emblem promise to carry on ‘beating’ forever.
