Florentine Gold Beater Giusto Manetti, Active Since 1600s, Now Collaborates with Contemporary Artists

Giusto Manetti, a Florentine gold-beating workshop active since the early 1600s, has evolved from a small family bottega into a global leader in gold leaf production, now collaborating with contemporary artists. The company, which has been passed down through 15 generations, produces gold leaf through a complex process involving over ten hours of work, from ingots to micron-thin sheets, with final finishing still done by hand. Notable historical commissions include restoring the golden ball atop Florence's Duomo in 1602 for Grand Duke Ferdinando II de' Medici, and supplying gold leaf for the Rockefeller Center, Versailles, the Kremlin, and Buckingham Palace. The workshop survived a 1944 Allied bombing and the 1966 Florence flood, relocating to Campi Bisenzio in 2013. Today, it supplies gold leaf to artists such as Giuseppe Penone, Mimmo Paladino, Federico Gori, James Lee Byars, and Remo Salvadori, and for architectural projects like Rem Koolhaas's Haunted House at Fondazione Prada (2015). The company also produces edible and cosmetic gold. Leonardo da Vinci designed an innovative hammer for gold beating, found in the Codex Atlanticus, which influenced the craft's mechanization.