Goldfinger

Bruno Martinazzi follows an Italian tradition that includes the Renaissance masters Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Benvenuto Cellini, all of them sculptors trained in the goldsmith’s art.1 Martinazzi views the acts of chiseling a block of stone or hammering a sheet of gold as opposites that mirror one another. In both his stone sculpture and his gold jewelry, he favors minimalist anatomical renderings, which he sees as symbolizing the human condition. Some of his imagery—an eye, a clenched fist, a set of brooding lips, or an accusatory finger—has aggressive and even sinister overtones. Isolated from the body, the fragments have a power greater than an ordinary gesture. According to the artist, they represent an expansion of recognizable forms into reflections and ideas.2 The hand in this bracelet represents the creative urge and the point of contact between two individuals.

Yvonne J. Markowitz, “Goldfinger” in Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by Yvonne J. Markowitz (Boston: MFA Publications, 2011), 175.