Attilio Codognato: the Venetian jeweller, the man who loved to play with beauty.

«Attilio gave the already admirable family heritage an unexpected baroque spin that is as personal as it is faithful to the irreverent sense of history that has always been part of the Codognato spirit». Angelo Flaccavento

Marsilio Arte is pleased to announce the publication of A. Codognato. Memento Vivere, which narrates, with both irony and elegance, a journey into the mind and work of Attilio Codognato, the Venetian master jeweller – a figure as charismatic as he was enigmatic.

Attilio Codognato was far more than the heir to a historic Venetian jewellery maison: a free spirit, a refined collector, and an impassioned lover of contemporary art – from Duchamp to Warhol, from Rauschenberg to Twombly – he built around himself a personal aesthetic universe, cultured and ironic.

The shop, founded in 1866 behind St Mark’s Square and inherited from his great-grandfather Simeone, over the years has become a true laboratory of mystery and sophistication. Precious earrings, rings, bracelets and skull necklaces set with diamonds, serpents entwined in gold, and cameos: his jewels, imbued with historical and philosophical symbols that have their roots both in the refined techniques of Byzantine, Roman and Renaissance culture and in the seventeenth-century Memento mori imagery, are not merely ornaments but true talismans that engage in dialogue with death while celebrating life.

Through three essays and over 150 images – including the iconic shots taken in 2022 by Juergen Teller, which crystallise Codognato’s ethos, steeped in history yet always committed to the avant-garde – the volume conveys the intensity of a timeless creative journey, a hymn to life and to beauty itself.

The opening essay by Angelo Flaccavento is structured in two acts and recounts Attilio Codognato’s visionary spirit through Giacomo Leopardi’s Dialogue Between Fashion and Death, presented here in its complete version, based on Charles Edwardes’ 1857 translation, revised and abridged for today’s readers, with some authorial flourishes.

Eduardo Cicelyn’s reflection ideally juxtaposes Codognato’s artistic practice with the visionary, dreamlike approach of Marcel Duchamp: a whirlwind of eccentric images, rich in symbols and mysterious omens.

Alessandro Codognato reconstructs the story of a family and a workshop, transformed by Attilio into a total aesthetic experience.

The photographs of these extraordinary creations – taken, among others, by Ruven Afanador, Sante D’Orazio, Derry Moore, Mario Sorrenti, Juergen Teller and Chadwick Tyler – are grouped into thematic sections that define the maison’s stylistic hallmark: snakes, cameos, crosses and skulls. Alongside these jewels, the book also pays tribute to the celebrities connected to Codognato, including Maria Grazia Chiuri, Elton John, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Alessandro Michele, and Tilda Swinton.

From great-grandfather to grandfather and from father to son, Codognato’s jewellery has been and remains a place of mysterious luxury and boundless sophistication, which in Venice has succeeded in merging art and excess into a unique poetics, with creations that continue to captivate collectors, artists, and designers to this day.