110 young talents selected to take part in the programme “A School, a Job. Training to Excellence”, in which Italy’s top masters craftsmen pass on their trade secrets to the artisans of the future, have been celebrated with a special event in Milan. If you could choose your mentor, someone who has mastered the craft and moulded with passion and dedication the secrets of an invaluable trade, who would you pick? That is the question that some of Italy’s most promising artisans have had the good fortune to ask themselves, thanks to a special project created by the Cologni Foundation for the Métiers d’Art, an institution whose mission is to safeguard the relationship between master and apprentice, where wisdom empowers budding enthusiasm. “What I appreciate most about the project is that we give these young men and women the opportunity to work with someone who knows how to create and, most importantly, how to teach, which is the quality that defines a real master,” says Alberto Cavalli, Director of the Cologni Foundation for the Métiers d’Art. “The fusion of these two elements – the ability to hand down a beautiful profession and the desire to learn and perfect a skill – can radiate a powerful energy!”
Month: February 2017
Painted in stone
The beautiful tradition of mosaic works fashioned in semiprecious stones that originated in the Italian Renaissance is still carried on today in the heart of Florence by the Scarpelli family: in the workshop Le Pietre nell’Arte, this art finds a natural continuation under the banner of absolute and acknowledged excellence. This particular mosaic technique, with which extraordinary pictorial and decorative effects can be achieved, is called commesso fiorentino from the Latin “committere”, to bring together, to unite.
It was originally developed in the second half of the 15th century, but this art flourished under the enlightened patronage of the Medici family: first with Francis I and then Ferdinand I, who founded the glorious Opificio delle Pietre Dure (Workshop for Hard Stone) in 1588. Indeed, most of the specialised artisans who decorated the Medici’s magnificent Cappella dei Principi in the Basilica di San Lorenzo, a masterpiece of this technique, were trained in the Florentine Workshop. Many extraordinary artworks were produced with these inlays in semiprecious stones, ranging from furniture to ornaments and even magnificent copies of paintings, and the Florentine masters became famous throughout the world for their inventiveness and skill, until the decline of the Medici and Lorraine dynasties in the late 19th century.
The ancient and laborious art of commesso is perpetuated today by master craftsman Renzo Scarpelli and his son Leonardo: both artisans command with unmatched skill every phase of this technique, from selecting the stones to cutting them, smoothing and polishing the surface, exploiting every shade and variety of colour in the natural stones to create astonishing “stone paintings”. The expressive power and pictorial delicacy of their works is awe-inspiring, as one does not expect so much beauty to emerge from a material as difficult and hard as stone… Tuscan landscapes, Florence and the Arno, children and animals playing, country scenes, seascapes, still lives, flowers, jewels, objects and miniatures, replicas of famous paintings… all appeal to us for their poetry and perfect execution.