Alvisé Boccanegra:

Venice — A floating miracle

Alvisé Boccanegra: 00:28

This crucifix has been found floating on the high tide two years ago when the aqua grande, we call the aqua grande, is this big high tide that happens on November of two years ago. This is a piece I have done completely. It is a crucifix from the eighteenth century carved by Giuseppe Torretti, who was a master artisan in Venice. It is very peculiar because the cross is completely covered by tortoise lamina. This crucifix has begun the symbol for the flooding because all the newspapers also outside of Italy was reporting the shot of this cross ship exploding on the water.

Sarah Monk: 01:20

Hi. This is Sarah with another episode of materially Speaking, where artists and artisans tell their stories through the materials they choose. In the third of our Venice series, Mike and I are meeting furniture restorer, Alvisé Boccanegra. It’s easy to get lost in Venice, but we enjoy the rewards finding quiet squares, a hidden walled garden, a jazz group rehearsing in a front room. After crossing the Rialto Bridge, we weave through the streets of San Polo until we eventually find Alvisé’s workshop on the Ground Floor of the same building that he was born in.

Sarah Monk: 01:53

Inside, it smells of wood and linseed oil. There are busy workbenches, neat shelves of brightly coloured powdered paints, and a large selection of jam jars with oils and waxes. On the back of the door is a dartboard. We’ve been drawn to Alvisé because of his work restoring a crucifix which was found floating in the Church Of San Moise after the high water in November 2019. This catastrophic flood bought the second highest water since records began in 1923.

Sarah Monk: 02:24

It submerged St Mark’s Square, caused enormous damage to homes and to artworks, and left two people dead. The photograph of this crucifix immersed in water was widely shared and symbolized the need to preserve the special and often sacred beauty of Venice. I ask Alvisé to introduce himself.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 02:45

My name is Alvisé . Boccanegra is my surname. My job started seventeen years ago with the Church of San Marco in the laboratories of conservation for wood sculptures. And there I met my grandmaster Maximilian, who teach me all the techniques for the old temperas with egg tempera, milk tempera, casinga tempera. And he also introduced me in the carving of wood.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 03:16

And I worked for them for seven years, then I decided to open my workshop. And at the beginning, with my own workshop was not easy to to start because my work works on, you know, have to trust in me. So you have to make some little works, not so beautiful, just to introduce your way of doing to antique dealers and private collections and so on. And it takes a long time to make it a real work to to live from with.

Sarah Monk: 03:55

I can understand because they’re entrusting you with things that

Alvisé Boccanegra: 03:59

Yeah.

Sarah Monk: 03:59

You can’t mess up.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 04:01

At the beginning, you have to try. I was going around in the city and asking for the antique dealers. Do you need a restore? Do you need something? Yes.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 04:15

Work on this piece and then we see how it’s done. And in time, time by time, I I found my my clients, my my my the people who trust me. Anyway, it’s it’s a journey. My work is a journey very long. Every day you learn something more.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 04:33

So you you never end your your growth. You’re always looking for new techniques to understand new ways of doing your your your job. Also because food items not always have a nice life. Because it’s just from the twentieth century that the people start to understand that the wood sculptures and wood furnitures was something important to preserve. Before they were always painting over or just throwing it away, the frames were preserved.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 05:19

The stone sculpture were preserved, but the wood furnitures and the wood sculpture was just used. And when it’s over, they just threw it away.

Sarah Monk: 05:28

Isn’t that interesting? So you you think it’s only in the last century really Yeah. People have

Alvisé Boccanegra: 05:32

appreciated Maybe one hundred fifty years, something like that. No more. Except for the big, you know, like church, furnitures, something like that was preserved anyway. But the, you know, the the furnitures in the house of the people, the sculptures that people also the sculpture of the churches were not preserved. Just painted over.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 05:55

When you change the time, change the styles, and they painted for make it different for the new style for the new period. And so when we work on these items, they are always full of problems. And so you every day you have to learn something to to find a way out.

Sarah Monk: 06:16

You’re Venetian.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 06:18

Yeah.

Sarah Monk: 06:18

So where were you born?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 06:20

I’m Venetian but I was born in Azolo, near Treviso. But I came here that I was like one year old, living here in the Second Floor.

Sarah Monk: 06:31

Of where we’re standing now?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 06:32

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. After I went out of my house and I’ve been living always in Venice but I’m somewhere else.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 06:43

Then I came back into my family house when I was 25, 20 six years old and I’m living here till that Gosh.

Sarah Monk: 06:53

And so what’s it like living in Venice, being brought up in Venice?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 06:56

It’s very it’s very peculiar. You know, Venice is very different from everywhere. You know, there are no cars, you’re always by walking. And the thing that when somebody asked me what’s the difference of living in Venice, I always use this story to make understand. There is not your house.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 07:19

The whole city is your house. Because when you’re walking through the city, you are always by feet and you always met people. And everything you do by day, by night, when you are younger, when you are older and so on, every part of the city has memories of your life. So, you know, I feel at home when I just see the lagoon. It’s just like home.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 07:47

I don’t need to come back inside my house. Everything is familiar. Everywhere is familiar. Because you spent your life in all the streets, in all the squares. One funny thing is if you want to go from one point to another in this city, you are never in time because you met everybody.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 08:07

So you have to stop to talk to everybody, everybody knows you. Hi, how are you? Where are going? So you are always late. Always.

Sarah Monk: 08:16

Not just because you get lost.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 08:17

No. Not because I love You don’t get lost.

Sarah Monk: 08:19

So can we go back to what you did until you became a craftsman?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 08:25

Right before beginning, I was studying for chemistry for restoration. I just studied for two years and it has been useful for me because it gave me a way to understand how material interact with the external, you know, sunlight, rain and how it gets ruined. I was a computer technical hardware and software, going house by house working on computer. Yeah. After I decided it was not my way, I I don’t like it anymore.

Sarah Monk: 09:01

And is it a family thing, this work?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 09:03

My grandfather was an artisan of Stuckey and Marmorino. You know Stuckey? The decoration made of gypsum. Okay. And the Marmorino is the the finishing of the walls made by lime and powder of marble.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 09:23

And a really ancient technique used also by Romans and so on for because it’s very durable and it’s very resistant to external elements like sun and rain and so on. And my grandfather worked for big architects in Italy and not all the notes only in Italy. But when I opened my own workshop, I decided that I have to interact only with one element. Just wood. Wood’s my my choice.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 09:59

And so I started my way on to find all the techniques and only about what have been done on wood. All the techniques of the painting on wood, the gilding on wood. At the beginning my family wasn’t so happy about that. You know, you’re wrong everything. Artisans doesn’t live anymore.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 10:25

I said, no, it’s my way. I like to work on it’s my way. I like it. And then I started on furnitures because I was only working on sculptures before. Sculptures, I mean, frames and chandeliers, everything made of wood but painted.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 10:45

Mhmm. Or gilded. Not just wood like a furniture. The materials you use on the wood is different because to carve wood you need wood that can be carved.

Sarah Monk: 10:59

Sorry. Oh, got a hammer as a ringtone.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 11:02

Yeah. It’s a great ringtone. It’s fine. Nobody has it. It’s good wood.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 11:11

Now, if you have to carve wood, you need a wood that can be carved. So when you don’t need it to be seen, the wood, so you have to to paint it over or to make a gold gilding. You use soft wood like cirmolo, I think is Swiss pine. Okay. That you can use almost in the North Italy.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 11:38

Then you can use lime wood that is really soft. It’s used for making carvings with little details.

Sarah Monk: 11:47

So these are the woods that are softer and if are not gonna see them at the end, if you’re gonna paint them, then these are the Yeah. Easier ones for carving.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 11:55

Also the paper wood, poplar Mhmm. Is piopo in Italian. Piopo is very used also for the the sculptures that need to be bring in procession because it’s very light wood. So you can find the crosses of the crucifix made of poplar because it’s very light. Other way, if you have to carve wood that has to be seen like the furnitures of the churches and so on, you have to carve hard wood like walnut.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 12:26

In Italy, quietly everywhere is walnut. If you go to Austria, find chestnut. In France, it’s oak. Also in the North Italy, in North West Of Italy, you can find oak and Chestnut is not really a hardwood. It’s between.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 12:43

It could be hard and not. It depends on where it grows.

Sarah Monk: 12:47

Really? So where they so the same wood, the same tree will

Alvisé Boccanegra: 12:51

Yeah. The woods is like that.

Sarah Monk: 12:53

Really?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 12:53

Yeah. If they grow very slow, maybe for, you know, they don’t have so much sun or not so much water. If they grow very slowly, the wood would be very compact. And so it becomes very strong, very hard. And if a tree grows very fast because all the condition is good and the wood would be little bit more softer.

Sarah Monk: 13:20

Mhmm.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 13:20

For all the woods is is the same.

Sarah Monk: 13:23

So I noticed in the Kuna, you have what looks like a little bookcase. Within step books, they’re little slices of wood. Yeah. So can you tell me about this?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 13:33

It started from just the idea comes from my master because it’s not easy to understand of which wood the the you are working on is done. So the easier way to understand it is to compare it. So you have your and you have a piece of wood, you exactly know what it is. And then you compare the the veins and the grain and you understand what you can understand what kind of wood is it. And from there started my wood case.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 14:12

And I started to collect them all the woods I found by myself by, you know, going outside in the countryside and so on. And then I start asking to friends of mine, they maybe they’re going to Brazil or in Africa, and I told them, bring me a piece of wood from where you go. And so I start collecting also exoxidil woods and some of them are so strong that you have to change the the blade of your chisels because it gets broken. You cannot carve with normal chisels. Some of them, the exoxylitol one, got sand dust inside the grain because they live in very sandy ground.

Sarah Monk: 15:03

That’s amazing.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 15:04

Yeah. And another difference between sculpted and varnished wood is all the the tools you use for to work on them because the the furnitures needs a lot of tools. And for the restoration of ancient furnitures, not contemporary, is quietly everything made by hand. There are no machines that can help you. So I’m going to buy and look in on the Internet to find tools also from the nineteenth century, wood planes Yeah.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 15:41

Chisels. There are some of them very very particular that you have to have them to make that job. You you can do it in other ways. So I’ve I’ve been looking for wood planes all over the world. I just bought one from Australia.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 15:58

Yeah. Because nobody use them anymore. Just me. Everybody want them because they are collectibles. Because very very rare, very particular and they want the the tool just to collect it.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 16:13

By the way, I need it to work. So I’m looking for them for a good price. And in Italy, in Europe are very expensive because all the collectors want it. So I found it out in Australia for a very cheap price. It took some months to arrive but now I got it.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 16:31

The tools are the same everywhere. You know, a little bit different is for the China and Japanese woodworking. I’ve been in Japan Few Years ago, and I’ve been looking for some of them tools because they are very very good tools but they has to be used in different way of the European tools. You know, just stupid example, the the European saw, you use it pushing. And the way, the the Japanese saw is used pulling.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 17:03

Because there is different concept. There’s different way of working. Because quietly all the artisans works sitting and so they use different movement. We work standing, so our body is the weight to move the saw. Instead they use the muscle of the of the back to pull the the saw.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 17:25

The furnitures, you got a lot to learn about the varnishes. You can find quietly everything for paintings, but for furnitures, you can it’s very difficult to find out something because nobody wrote down nothing in the years, in the centuries. I’ve been doing my own researches, and I found out a a book of an artisan of the eighteenth century from Tuscany that wrote for a dukkha, all the receipt for the the varnishes for making something. So on, but it’s very hard to understand. And often the the materials, the varnishes that he use are not anymore you can’t find it anymore.

Sarah Monk: 18:15

Can I ask you maybe to talk about one of the pieces that you’ve done in the last few years?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 18:22

It is a crucifix from the eighteenth century carved by Giuseppe Torretti, who was a master artisan in Venice. And it is very peculiar because the cross is completely covered by tortoise lamina.

Sarah Monk: 18:42

Tortoise shell.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 18:43

Yeah. But it’s not it’s not tortoise shell, it’s the tortoise shell has worked to be laminated. It’s very very thin.

Sarah Monk: 18:52

So I’m very Oh, okay. They stretch. They You

Alvisé Boccanegra: 18:55

know, like in jewelry, you you have a a metal sheet and you have to pass through the is the machine.

Sarah Monk: 19:02

Like a roller machine.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:03

Yeah. To make it thinner.

Sarah Monk: 19:04

Uh-huh.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:05

It’s the same work but with a toy toy shell. Wow. So I don’t know. I tried because I found some pieces of turturoys and I tried to do it myself because I want to understand how they do that. Because if you know how they do that, you can restore it.

Sarah Monk: 19:21

So this piece was floating in the lagoon?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:23

No. Was floating inside the church when the aqua grande, we call the aqua grande, this this big high tide, went inside the church. Also inside here, there was 25 centimeters of water.

Sarah Monk: 19:35

Oh gosh.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:36

Yeah. It was very very high. You see, there is a big step for coming here. Two steps to go outside. So if you were walking, the water was like here.

Sarah Monk: 19:46

So this was February

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:49

November 2019, yeah. Yeah. 02/2019, the November 13.

Sarah Monk: 19:56

Just before the pandemic.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 19:57

Yeah.

Sarah Monk: 19:58

So how did you approach this project? Was it just you working on it or

Alvisé Boccanegra: 20:01

was it just me. I’m always by myself. I’m the only one working inside here.

Sarah Monk: 20:08

So this crucifix, why did it need restoring?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 20:12

This crucifix has begun the symbol for the flooding because all the newspapers also outside of Italy was reporting the shot of this crucifix floating on the water. Here in Venice, we got, like, that I can remember, four or five crucifix made of tortoise. But it was used in that century to make like frames and mirrors made of this lamina of tortoise. And behind the tortoise is gilded with gold leaf. So in the white spots of the Tartar Toys, you see the gold behind shining.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 20:52

This is a part of the edge of one branch of the of the cross. And we have the molded wood. Then on the molded wood, have a paper glued directly on the on the wood. And then we have the shaped tortoise shell. To shape it, it has to be boiled in water.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 21:16

And then you it becomes very soft like a tissue. And you put it over this mold wood and you let it stay there till it’s cold. And when it is cold, it it preserve the the shape. Then you have to gild the inside of the tortoise, but not using the same glue for that you used for the paper. I used what I think it was been used in the original one.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 21:45

And it is a glue called olio resina. That it is oil and pine resin.

Sarah Monk: 21:53

Linseed oil.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 21:54

Linseed oil. This is a very strong glue for the gilding. It was used also for the gilding of iron and the gilding of marbles and stones. And then you have the two pieces, the tortoise, gilded on the inside, and the wood with the paper. And then you glue them together with the bone glue that it is the most used in history, glue for furniture and wood.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 22:23

So you have to keep the bones at like fifty sixty degrees for a very long time till the the glue from the bones, the proteins from the the bones comes out and fill the water, then you have to reduce the water and you have to glue. And it is really strong like a stone. All the edges are made of mother of pearl. These are all pieces of mother of pearl covered and glued on the cross and fixed with nails of silver with a sphere head.

Sarah Monk: 23:03

Can you tell me a little bit about mother of pearl?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 23:06

Mother of pearl is a shell. This one was particularly difficult to work on that because some little pieces, few pieces were missing. And so I have to make the new one. And today, this you can find only very very thin mother of pearl shells. So I’ve been going through antique dealers to find old stuff made of mother of pearl to cut them and make the new pieces.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 23:37

It’s not easy to find it very thick.

Sarah Monk: 23:39

Thick. And why is that? Do do we know why it’s thinner now than it used to be?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 23:44

I think that the very thick one is are protected. Like the tortoise, you can you can’t work it anymore. You have just to work on something you find already on the antique dealers and so on on

Sarah Monk: 24:00

So how big is it? Just to get my head around, how big was the crucifix?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 24:04

Oh, it’s two meters. All the cross, not the the Christ, but all the cross was two meters and 60. Yeah. Two meters and 60 centimeters high. And the instead was like one meter 60.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 24:23

One meter 40. Something like that. The Christ was covered in the soft pine wood I told you before. And it is completely empty inside to make it lighter because it is a process professional. It has to be carried.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 24:41

Mhmm. And also the cross is empty inside. And the Christ is made of a lot of slices of wood to prevent the moving and the cracking of the wood. And finishing is a burnish, brown red varnish to make it appear the wood like Bosso. Bosso is a precious wood used for smaller Christ with a very beautiful color boxwood maybe is the English word.

Sarah Monk: 25:15

And what sort of condition was it when it came to you?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 25:19

Before we went to the church and the Christ has been put in the Second Floor, not warmed, just with the the temperature was the outside temperature. There was no nothing to warm it. And it’s been left there for six month to dry up very slowly because if you make it dry very quickly, the wood can move and the christ can crack everywhere or, you know, the cross can bend. Then we went to the church. We bring in here by boat and little by little just glued together the the broken parts and then start to understand how to work on the the tortoise.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 26:14

So you have to understand how to clean it, how to make it shiny again. Then all the mother of pearl pieces, thousand of them, from the front and also behind. Everywhere is made of mother pearl. And then one by one has been cleaned and polished again. And I collaborated with the jewellery to clean up and to make new nails because some of them were broken.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 26:49

And also because they have equipment to clean up the silver in the right way. Then I started to make the new parts, the the missing parts of mother of pearl working with Chisels. No chisels. These are files.

Sarah Monk: 27:07

Files.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 27:08

Yes. Yeah. Because before you sew it, and then you have to carve it with the files. You cannot carve it with the chisels. It’s jewellery tools.

Sarah Monk: 27:20

And that was for making the holes for the nails perhaps, was it?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 27:24

For the holes on the nails and also to make the very small carving on the single element. So you have to find out the way to to do it.

Sarah Monk: 27:36

And what were the missing parts? Did some bits go missing completely?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 27:40

Some of the mother some piece of mother of pearl was missing, but few of them. And on the Christ, there were a finger on the one hand was broken, and contact with the high tide, with the water, melted the glues. So the lower part, the one that has been for a longer time in contact with the water, the glues were melted. The furniture that is used to make it stand was completely destroyed because the church where the crucifix is to also today is the Samoa Yazai church and is very low on the sea level. So every year, the high tide flows inside.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 28:29

Not so much to make the Christ following the water, but the furniture every year goes under the water. So it was really damaged. The decoration of the basement of these furniture was completely missing or rotten. So I needed to make new one with the same shape, wood and same techniques to make the furnitures come back to be used. Everything has been paid by the Venetian heritage.

Sarah Monk: 29:01

Mhmm. Did it feel? What was the experience of doing this restoration?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 29:06

Very beautiful. Very beautiful because I’ve been it took so long time, months of work. And trying to do something you have never done before is always very exciting for me. And to improve myself with Tortoise and the mother of pearl has been very interesting. It’s been I learned a lot.

Sarah Monk: 29:31

And was this during the pandemic that you were doing it? So

Alvisé Boccanegra: 29:35

Yeah. No. Because for me it was quite easy because I live on the Second Floor over my workshop. So I don’t have to go out of my house to work. So I just was at house, at home, closing up with the lockdown and so on.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 29:52

So I came down and work in my workshop and they came back to my family.

Sarah Monk: 29:56

Did you love the piece?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 29:58

Yeah. Of course. In a show. For one year, almost one year has been in Palazzo Grimani to be seen by visitors, the all the restored crucifix. And also this publication has been done.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 30:18

And then last November the ‘13, ‘2 years after, the Christ came back to the church and there has been a presentation with all the priests. Very nice. Hi, Les. I have a question, which is what are people thinking about now? What kind of concerns do you have with the people in your community?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 30:42

Venice is a is like a museum now. So it’s not really in a good condition. It’s not it’s not so easy to live here. In one way, it is the perfect place to live. In another way, it’s quite impossible to live here because the services are missing and so you have to find your way of let it work.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 31:13

You have to manage to, you know, so also for my work, for the things I use, materials that I use for my work. There is maybe one shop in all the city where I can buy the bone glue and it’s very expensive.

Sarah Monk: 31:30

And the water level, how how and what is being done to make sure there’s no more Alta water? Is it There

Alvisé Boccanegra: 31:38

is the mosa. The mosa is this this is very particular in in word. It’s like a floating doors that close when the tides gets high.

Sarah Monk: 31:56

And where are they?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 31:57

In all the Boce Di Porto. Venice inside the lagoon and then there is Lido, then it is between the lagoon and the sea. You have these two holes that makes the sea comes into the lagoon. And in these two channels, they have been built this floating doors.

Sarah Monk: 32:20

What are they made of? Metal. Metal.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 32:22

Yeah. They get inflated and they rise from the ground underwater and they comes up and close the channels to reduce the amount of water that comes inside the lagoon when the tide is high. They start using this mosaic right after the high tide of the 02/2019. To make it, they had to dig the ground under the sea. And the mosa works but another problem is that it is very very very expensive to to make it rise, to close the channels.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 33:00

Like hundreds, thousands of euros every time.

Sarah Monk: 33:03

Well, coming back to your work, are there young artisans following in your footsteps in Venice?

Alvisé Boccanegra: 33:10

No. I explain. Some of them are interested about this kind of work. Interested about this kind of work. But as I told you before, it takes a long time to understand how to do this work.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 33:30

And everybody wants to earn money quickly. They don’t want to wait to have the when I began, it took me like three years before I start earning something from this work. And in the same time, I was fixing computers to to live, to pay the rent, to pay my food and so on.

Sarah Monk: 34:02

Taking on an apprentice is an expense for an artisan.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 34:06

It’s very expensive. Because if I have to make one job, one item, it takes me, you know, one week. If I took someone that works here and I have to pay him to make the work, it takes three weeks to make the same work. And so I spend more time to make one piece and also I have to pay somebody else. You can manage.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 34:30

It’s impossible.

Sarah Monk: 34:32

If you were to encourage a young artisan, what would you say is the most enjoyable bit of the job for you? Because you obviously love it.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 34:39

Everything. There is not one thing. We were talking about artisan and just few days ago with friends. You know, you don’t make the artisan, you are an artisan. It’s just your way of living.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 34:54

I’m when I close my workshop and I go home, I’m still working. I’m also, if I’m not here, it’s something you feel it. You just get relaxed if you think how to do for your work. It is not something that makes you tired and you feel anxious, you know. You feel relaxed, you know.

Alvisé Boccanegra: 35:21

Just before sleeping, I’m just thinking tomorrow, maybe I can do this for solve the problem on that, you know. And one thing to say that if you make your way on restoration, you can work and touch and understand masterpieces that the people normally can only see from distance. You can learn so much more than just seeing them.

Sarah Monk: 36:00

So thanks to Alvisé Boccanegra. You can discover more about him from our website, materiallyspeaking.com, and see photos on Instagram. If you’re enjoying Materially Speaking, please subscribe to our newsletter so we can let you know when the next episode goes live.