FIRST YEAR 

The first year goldsmith program provides basic knowledge to new students, through the practice of drawing and other fundamental techniques. It also provides a first approach to the history of art. The program is structurally linked to the city of Florence and its revolutionary way of understanding drawing and design as principles of all visual art.

The practical subjects, which take place from Monday to Thursday, are complemented by “Paths of sacred art”, a theoretical subject that prepares students for the specificity and creative challenges in the field of sacred art. 

• FIRST QUARTER (COMMON TO THE THREE COURSES OF PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND JEWELERY) 

THE BASICS OF DRAWING

• The design and circulation of models in Europe between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
• Drawing and unity of the arts: Lorenzo Ghiberti and contemporary Florence

• Exercises: study of volumes through the drawing of solids. From the simplified geometric version to the development of the line and tone. Exercises to control the use of the pencil. Compositional study of the panels of the doors of the baptistery. Students will practice in the analysis of proportion and its translation into graphics.

• Drawing between printing and goldsmithing in Florence.
• Drawing as a study of nature in Leonardo within the Tuscan tradition.

• Exercises: practice of Indian ink drawing, a very important technique in the Renaissance which has different rules than pencil. Students will analyze real botanical samples following the example of Leonardo da Vinci and other artists. This will introduce the work on the study of anatomy that will be carried out during the third trimester.

• The birth of the Academy and the Florentine sixteenth century
• The practice of drawing and collections between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Florence

• Exercises: composition of draperies and plaster casts of Michelangelo’s David. Students will have to choose two landscapes as they like, which will be analyzed and studied from a compositional point of view together with the teacher.

• SECOND QUARTER 

        LABORATORY 

• Technology: physical properties of materials; 
• Design: basic geometric constructions; orthogonal projections; axonometric and freehand isometric views;
• History of goldsmithing: prehistoric and ancient Egyptian goldsmithing, Greek and Etruscan goldsmithing, Roman and barbarian goldsmithing

• Exercises: Lima and fretwork, podded copetta, bezels, wedding rings, curb chain, shaped bezels, solitary ring with bezel

• THIRD QUARTER 

LABORATORY

• Technology: chemical properties of materials; metals and alloys; mathematics of alloys, introduction to metal smelting.
• Design: classic ornate design; ornate design; freehand jewelry sketch.
• History of goldsmithing: early medieval and Romanesque goldsmithing. Goldsmithing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the great period of Renaissance goldsmithing.

• Exercises: Band ring, introduction to chisel, baroque chisel, personal project. 

SECOND YEAR

During the second year the student begins to deepen the specific techniques and skills of his own laboratory. Starting from a first quarter in which students will deepen three different techniques related to the goldsmith profession. A consistent number of hours of life modeling and a subject of art history are foreseen which, starting from classical Greek art, will provide a solid cultural basis for a knowledge of the Western artistic tradition.

• FIRST QUARTER JEWELERY 

TECHNIQUES

• Engraving on jewelry / Artistic engraving /  Rhinoceros I level

HISTORY OF ART

• Crete and Mycenae. Archaic Greece. The classical age and the principles of harmony and proportion applied to the most significant works and characters (Mirone, Fidia, Policleto).
• Late Classicism and Hellenism. Praxiteles and Lysippos.
• The Etruscan heritage in Roman art. Roman art and its specific artistic expressions.
• Visit to the Archaeological Museum of Florence.
• Art before iconoclasm.
• Monumental art in Rome, Constantinople and Ravenna.
• Art in Byzantine Italy.
• Late and post-Byzantine art.
• The Romanesque.
• The Gothic: structural and aesthetic principles applied to architecture and sculpture.
• The painting of the gothic age: notes on the international gothic and its main characteristics.
• Visit to San Miniato al Monte.

• SECOND QUARTER 

LABORATORY

• wire jaws.
• solitaire ring with wire claw.
• pin mounted in plaster. 
• candlestick with interlocking elements.
• rudiments of pavè setting.

• THIRD QUARTER 

LABORATORY

• pendant with gallery and pave.
• baroque chisel.
• figurative chisel.
• chisel on shaped plates.
• personal project of sacred jewelery.

THIRD YEAR

During the third year the student prepares to start his / her own artistic activity, concluding the scholastic path. In addition to learning three new techniques and continuing to hone his skills, he will study a new subject called “artistic entrepreneurship” in which he will learn the basics of conducting his own business as an artist. At the end of the year the student will have time to develop a personal project in which he will apply all the contents and skills acquired during the three years of studies, a sort of thesis that will document his artistic evolution.

• FIRST QUARTER 

PAINTING TECHNIQUES

• microsculpture / 3D modeling / setting

ART HISTORY

• Early Renaissance. The three pioneers of Florentine humanism: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio 

•  The second Renaissance. Sandro Botticelli and Andrea Mantegna
• The mature Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raffaello Sanzio.
• Visit to the Pitti Palace.
• The art of the Counter-Reformation.
• Michelangelo Merisi known as Caravaggio. The essential principles of baroque aesthetics and rhetoric. 
• Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Pietro da Cortona – Giambattista Tiepolo
• Visit to the Pitti Palace (second).
• Neoclassicism. 
• Realism and painting of social commitment.
• The historical avant-gardes of the early twentieth century in their essential characters.
• Visit to the Museum of the ‘900.

• SECOND QUARTER 

LABORATORY

• trilogy with wire jaws.
• enameled cross.
• bishop’s seal ring.
• Eucharistic case with enameled lid.

• THIRD QUARTER 

LABORATORY AND THESIS

• necklace closure.
• earth casting experience.
• making molds for waxes.
• guide to the creation of sacred goldsmiths.
• guide to corporate accounting.
• personal project of sacred jewelery.

PATHS OF SACRED ART

From the first year, students will have the opportunity to attend a single training module specifically dedicated to sacred art paths, which will be studied in depth during the entire three-year period. The goal is to offer highly specialized training elements. 

Lessons will take place every Friday of the academic year, and will be enriched by guided tours of the enormous artistic heritage of the city of Florence and Tuscany. The module will provide insights – both theoretical and practical – to the topics addressed during the lessons.