Florence’s Gold Leaf Gilding: A Guide for UK Collectors

The allure of gold is timeless. For millennia, it has carried associations with the divine, the eternal and the sacred. For French fine art photographer and multidisciplinary artist Zack Zublena, gold is more than a material—it is a central theme in a long-standing artistic exploration. This journey, which has shaped his fine art photography, led him to Florence, the historic centre of Renaissance art, to immerse himself in the traditional craft of gold leaf gilding. His practical training at the Oro e Colore workshop represented not a new beginning, but a deepening of an evolving relationship with one of art history’s most enduring materials.

Gold in Ancient Egypt

Zack’s fascination with gold draws partly upon its profound historical and symbolic associations. In ancient Egypt, gold and brilliant yellow were closely connected with the life-giving sun and divine imagery. The British Museum notes that brilliant yellow, used as a substitute for gold, was associated with the sun and the flesh of the gods.

Gold’s durability, radiance and rarity made it particularly suited to objects associated with sacred, royal and funerary contexts. Rather than viewing the material simply as decoration, Zack is interested in this historical use of gold as a symbolic visual language—one capable of suggesting light, permanence, value and transcendence.

These associations have informed his photographic work, in which gold-coloured body paint transforms the photographed human figure into a luminous, sculptural presence. His later study of genuine gold leaf in Florence offered an opportunity to explore the material itself through an entirely different artistic process.

From Ancient Egypt to Renaissance Florence

Across centuries and cultures, gold continued to play an important role in sacred and ceremonial art. In medieval and Renaissance Italy, gold leaf became an essential element of many painted panels, altarpieces and devotional works.

The National Gallery in London describes bright colours and gilding as characteristic of painting in Florence around 1400, where decorative effects could be used to evoke the kingdom of heaven.

Fra Angelico provides another celebrated example. In Christ Glorified in the Court of Heaven at the National Gallery, gold leaf is incised with radiating lines around Christ, creating the impression of golden light emanating from the figure.

This relationship between material, light and symbolism is particularly relevant to Zack Zublena’s own artistic interests. His photographic practice has long explored how reflective gold-coloured surfaces interact with controlled light. Studying traditional gilding in Florence allowed him to approach similar questions through physical material rather than photography alone.

Practical Training at Oro e Colore

To connect directly with this tradition, Zack undertook intensive practical training at Oro e Colore, a Florentine workshop dedicated to traditional decorative techniques.

The experience provided direct exposure to the disciplined sequence involved in traditional water gilding: preparing the surface, applying gesso and bole, handling extremely delicate sheets of gold leaf and finally burnishing the gilded surface.

The UK’s Victoria and Albert Museum guide to water gilding illustrates this same traditional process, from the application of layers of gesso to the laying and burnishing of gold leaf.

Learning the Foundations of Traditional Water Gilding

Traditional water gilding is a slow and exacting craft requiring careful preparation. Zack’s training began with the foundational stage of preparing the surface. Multiple thin layers of gesso are applied and progressively worked until a smooth surface is achieved.

A layer of bole is then applied before the gold leaf. Bole is traditionally a fine clay preparation that provides a suitable surface beneath the leaf and can influence the warmth and appearance of the finished gold.

The National Gallery’s technical documentation of water gilding describes the process as gold leaf applied to wetted bole and subsequently burnished. Technical studies of historic paintings in the collection also reveal layers of gesso and coloured bole beneath gilded surfaces.

For Zack, this preparatory work offered a new appreciation of the often unseen labour required to produce a luminous final surface. The gradual preparation, repetition and concentration involved in the process also connected naturally with the contemplative dimension already present in his artistic practice.

Inside the Oro e Colore Workshop

At Oro e Colore, Zack worked directly with the specialised tools and materials associated with traditional gilding.

Handling genuine 24K gold leaf requires precision and sensitivity because of the extraordinary delicacy of the material. Once laid onto the prepared surface, the gold can be carefully burnished with a polished agate tool, transforming its initially subdued appearance into a highly reflective surface.

The V&A’s documentation of traditional water gilding similarly shows how burnishing forms part of the finishing process and creates the characteristic brilliance associated with this historic technique.

For an artist whose photography has long depended upon the interaction of light with gold-coloured surfaces, working directly with genuine gold leaf offered a different understanding of reflection, texture and luminosity.

How Florentine Craftsmanship Is Informing Zack’s Evolving Practice

Zack Zublena’s work with gold predates his Florentine gilding studies by many years. His fine art photographic collections use gold-coloured body paint to transform the human form through light, reflection and composition.

His photography has also entered substantial commercial interiors, including installations in more than 120 David Lloyd Clubs across the United Kingdom and continental Europe.

His exploration of gold in photographic collections such as Golden Souls was therefore already grounded in an established visual and symbolic language. The Florence training expanded that exploration by introducing direct knowledge of genuine gold leaf and traditional craftsmanship.

The distinction is important: the figures represented in Zack Zublena’s fine art photography are painted with gold-coloured body paint; the photographic prints themselves do not contain gold leaf. Genuine 24K gold and silver leaf enter his practice separately through his developing mixed-media work.

Traditional gilding therefore provides another artistic vocabulary rather than replacing photography. It creates a bridge between the ephemeral quality of photographed light and the physical, reflective presence of metal leaf.

A New Mixed-Media Direction

The influence of Zack’s Florentine training has already begun to appear in his mixed-media practice. One developing work combines a sculptural lion bas-relief with genuine 24K gold and silver leaf, extending his exploration of gold beyond the two-dimensional photographic image.

The preparation and gilding techniques studied in Florence—including surface preparation, bole application, laying metal leaf and burnishing—provide a technical foundation for this new direction.

This work represents an expansion of Zack’s practice rather than a replacement for his established photography. It brings together his longstanding interest in gold, his photographic sensitivity to light and his more recent engagement with traditional Italian craftsmanship.

The mixed-media work remains distinct from the fine art photographic prints available through ZZGALLERY.

A Dialogue Between Florence and Contemporary Art

For UK collectors and design professionals, Zack Zublena’s study in Florence provides additional context for understanding the role of gold throughout his wider practice. It connects a contemporary photographic language with techniques visible in historic works held by major British institutions including the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The relationship is not one of imitation. Zack’s photographic work remains contemporary in medium and presentation, while his study of gilding provides direct knowledge of a material whose artistic history stretches across centuries.

This combination of photography, traditional craftsmanship and emerging mixed-media work allows the broader practice to move between image and object, historical reference and contemporary expression.

Conclusion

Zack Zublena’s journey to Florence represents a continuation of an artistic exploration that began long before his study of traditional gilding. From the symbolic associations of gold in ancient Egypt to the extraordinary gilded surfaces of medieval and Renaissance Italian painting, the material has carried meanings connected with light, divinity, permanence and value.

Learning traditional water gilding at Oro e Colore enabled Zack to encounter those ideas through physical craftsmanship as well as through historical research and photography.

This knowledge now complements his continuing work as a French fine art photographer while opening new possibilities within mixed-media art. The photographic collections available through ZZGALLERY remain rooted in the interaction between the gold-painted human form, controlled light and composition, while his developing three-dimensional work explores genuine metal leaf as a material in its own right.

To explore Zack Zublena’s fine art photography, visit the ZZGALLERY collections, or contact ZZGALLERY for further information.