Sep 74 min read

Vicenza city of gold

Vicenza has always been considered the Italian city of gold, able to boast for centuries the production of about a third of all the goldsmith work of the beautiful country.

Ok, Arezzo friends, we know... Do we want to say that Vicenza is itself a jewel? What do you say? But certainly, without a doubt Arezzo in turn!

Let's get to us: the first document that attests to our ancient tradition dates back to 1399, when the "Constitution of the Guild of Goldsmiths of Vicenza" was issued: already at that time the city counted on the presence of 150 artisan goldsmiths.

Extraordinary works had already been created, such as the reliquary of the Holy Thorn for the Sanctuary of Santa Corona - today in the Diocesan Museum together with several other spectacular works of medieval jewelry.

Artisan artists, who already in those dark centuries laid the foundations of a culture of Beauty that would definitively flourish in the sixteenth century.

A prominent figure in our goldsmith tradition was certainly Valerio Belli, known as Valerio Vicentino, born in Vicenza in 1468 by a wealthy family from Milan.

A refined "aurifex" and "gemmarum sculptor", he was perhaps one of the best-known talents in the Vicenza scene before the rise of a certain stonemason we well know.

The great contemporary painter and historian Vasari dedicated a chapter to him in his "Lives", judging him the best, fastest and most precise existing engraver, comparable only to the great ancient Greek and Latin engravers.

Andrea Palladio himself frequented his house and was able to study his rich collection of coins and medals, drawings of ancient works, casts and plaster casts: a priceless treasure, an academy where he could broaden his horizons and lay the foundations of his artistic culture.

In 1520 Belli arrived in Rome after a long stay in Venice, accompanied by his humanist friend G. Lascaris. Here his art earned him the admiration of Leo X and the fervent friendship of even Michelangelo and Raphael, who had such esteem for him that they painted his portrait. Raphael in "a boxwood tondo measuring two palms", Michelangelo in a bas-relief in Carrara marble, preserved until the mid-18th century in the Casa Gualdo museum in Vicenza.

One of his most famous artifacts was undoubtedly a casket, a masterpiece of Renaissance glyptics, commissioned by Pope Clement VII and currently preserved at the Museo degli argenti, in Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

The work, which consists of 24 engraved rock crystal panels, required two years of work and was paid by the Pope 2000 gold scudi; let us remember that Palladio received 60 scudi a year as director of the works of the Basilica!

From 1530 on Belli always stayed in his house-museum in Vicenza, the current site of the Odeon Cinema: for the Venetian artists that was a true socio-cultural reference point within the city. Passers-by from Vicenza who look up can see a plaque on the facade that commemorates him as the “prince of engravers” next to a bronze bust representing him.

His son Elio was a distinguished scholar and physician, one of the founders of the Accademia Olimpica. Palladio, his dear friend, remembers him as a "very scholar" of architecture. Another son, Valerio, a learned humanist, was the one who in August 1580 held the funeral oration in memory of the great Andrea Palladio in the church of S. Corona.

How can we not mention the Jewel of Vicenza, an ancient silver model of the city of Vicenza attributed to Andrea Palladio who would have seen it made two years before his death, then lost probably because of our usual Napoleon. And finally, remade in new shapes for an initiative of a citizens' committee between 2011 and 2013, tomorrow in procession up to the Sanctuary of Monte Berico.

Looking back over the centuries, we can say that various factors, including historical and social events, the availability of certain materials rather than others, the study by corporations of particular manufacturing techniques, the fashions of various eras, have allowed jewellery to develop its own “local soul” in Vicenza.

Some works cross many centuries before finding a new form in which an ancient past merges with a present proud to be able to perpetuate its own history.

This is the story, for example, of the Crown and Pectoral of the Madonna of Monte Berico, masterpieces from 1900 in which pre-existing jewels of extraordinary value are set, such as the ring donated by Pope Leo XIII - on the front of the crown - or the cross donated by Bishop Marco Zaguri in the center of the pectoral.

The School of Drawing and Plastic, founded in 1858 on the initiative of the Accademia Olimpica, had already begun to contribute to the connection between Renaissance-style workshops and the prospects of industrial and commercial development.

The protagonist of this gradual change at the turn of the 19th century was Luigi Merlo, a student of the goldsmith and engraver Giuseppe Dainese. A brilliant character, the first Vicenza master who could be defined as a "mechanical goldsmith", who gave a new face to modern goldsmithing.

The craftsman of yesterday thus becomes an entrepreneur, his workshop a structured business.

Now as in the past, he interprets desires that find shape in gold, thanks to his skill and creativity, becoming undisputed emblems of "made in Italy" throughout the world.

To date, the “VicenzaOro” Fair - which inaugurates its 70th edition today - and the “Jewelry Museum”, with another very interesting temporary exhibition inaugurated the day before yesterday, are international points of reference for the entire sector, both for goldsmithing and for jewellery.