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History 2019-11-28T09:41:54+01:00

HISTORY

The Scoletta dell’Arte dei Tiraoro e Battioro was the home of the Guild of artists and makers of gold thread and gold leaf.

Erected right next to the Church of Sant’Eustachio, known as San Stae, the building was completed, after some financial troubles, towards the end of 1711.

The practice of Guilds had spread throughout the city of Venice and also in Europe, since the XIIth Century and was intended to regulate and protect the activities and members of the same professional category.

The Scoletta dell’Arte dei Tiraoro e Battioro, placed under the protection of San Quirico, Santa Giustina and Santa Lucia, was intended to celebrate the sacred functions and to contain all the tools that the course and the teaching of the Art itself needed .
Relying on only 48 members, however, the Guild could not be said at the level of the most powerful and important ones in Venice, in facts, the members themselves often had to reach to their pockets to meet the running costs of the Schola.
Despite the varying fortunes, the members succeded in demonstrating the importance obtained in the society of the time and were able to obtain their own sacred space in the nearby Church of San Stae, where they could celebrate the various festivals of the Art of Tiraoro and also honour the departed brothers. This sacred space is still next to the altar of St. Oswald in the nave of the Church of San Stae.
The Scoletta dell’Arte dei Tiraoro e Battioro completed its story after almost a century of activity, on the eve of the fall of the Venetian Republic: it finally closed its doors in 1798.
In 1807, with the Napoleonic edicts and the introduction of the land register, the Scoletta became state property, then it was aquired by the Church in 1878 and later became the property of a famous Venetian antiques dealer who made it his workshop and in whose family it remains to this day.