Gerardo Sacco (1940) is an Italian goldsmith and entrepreneur, founder of homonymous jewellery company based in Crotone.

He has created the valuable award plaques of all the editions of the Magna Grecia International Award that the homonymous Foundation chaired by President Nino Foti, during forty years of national and international initiatives, has presented to outstanding individuals of Italian of origin who live abroad, in recognition of their contribution to the strengthening of cultural relations between Italy and their new lands of adoption. In 2004, during the Magna Grecia International Week in Buenos Aires, the same award was presented to the Master Goldsmith, in recognition of his ability to interpret, with his creations, the artistic expressions of the past, making them a memento of the millenary culture of Magna Graecia.

Gerardo Sacco was born in Crotone and as a teenager he undertook the challenging profession of goldsmith, finding work in a small workshop where he discovered his true vocation: shaping and modelling gold and silver. After learning the ropes of the goldsmith's art, he travelled to Valenza to polish and perfect the techniques and processes of goldsmithing. This experience enriched him and pushes him to return to his city to set up his own "artisan company".

In 1963 he began creating his first pieces, recovering the manufacturing processes of the past and specializing in a style rooted in the Magna Graecia culture as well as in the peasant tradition of the Mediterranean. During the same year he created his first collection of samples, with which he won the first prize at the goldsmith craft exhibition in Florence and the Oscar of Craftsmanship at the Sanremo exhibition. These national achievements brought Sacco to the attention of the goldsmith sector for his original and clearly distinctive products, making him the most famous Calabrian goldsmith in Italy and abroad, also by virtue of his particular affinity with people from the world of culture and entertainment.

Since 1966, Sacco has gone through all the most significant stages of success, both nationally and internationally. He works in Crotone in what he likes to call his "workshop", which is a way to emphasize the artisan and meticulous craft of the processing of gold, silver and precious stones, even though it is actually a modern company with a well-established brand in most of the world.

Gerardo Sacco's creativity is absolutely original and very personal, thus his works cannot be easily labelled by critics and experts within a single and specific category. They are the result of decades of research, drawing inspiration mainly from Magna Graecia and Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Deco, carried out with rigor and innate aesthetic sensitivity. This makes people look at him as if he was an archaeologist or even an anthropologist, who manages to recover processes, techniques, shapes and materials typical of the melting pot that Magna Graecia represented in the history of the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean.

In 1986 Franco Zeffirelli entrusted him with the creation of the jewels for his Otello, featuring soprano Katia Ricciarelli and tenor Placido Domingo. The artistic partnership between the two continued in 1988, for the film Il Giovane Toscanini, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Thomas Jowel. In 1991 Sacco created the stage jewels for the film Hamlet, starring Glenn Close, Mel Gibson and Alan Bates. He has also created the stage jewels for several theatrical performances, including Aida, staged at the Rome Opera in 1990, and Don Carlos, featuring tenor Luciano Pavarotti, which opened at La Scala in Milan in 1992. Other jewels created by Gerardo Sacco can be noticed in the films: Immortal beloved (1994) with Isabella Rossellini and Gary Oldman, in Anna Karenina (1996) with Sophie Marceau, and in Mistress of Her Destiny (1998) with Catherine McCormack and Rufus Sewell.

Gerardo Sacco has also created several jewels for Italian television programs: the “Drago Alato” (Winged Dragon) for Domenica In, the “Calice della Salute” (Goblet of Health) for Serata d’Onore, the “Tigre” (Tiger) for Scommettiamo Che...?, various jewels for I Fatti Vostri, the Cup with gold tokens for Numero Uno in 1994 with Pippo Baudo and Giancarlo Magalli. He has also worked for television productions such as Piccolo mondo antico by Cinzia TH Torrini, Orgoglio starring Elena Sofia Ricci and La freccia nera, a 2007 TV miniseries directed by Fabrizio Costa. He created the precious ornaments for Renato Virzì’s 2007 film N (Io e Napoleon) starring Monica Bellucci and, in 2010, for the modern opera I Promessi Sposi, directed by Michele Guardì.

Worthy of note is the realization, in 2003, of the float that the Calabria Region, accepting a proposal put forward by the Magna Grecia International Association, had decided to parade in New York, on Fifth Avenue, for the Columbus Day parade. On that occasion, the goldsmith from Crotone admirably put together, in an evocative assemblage, Pythagoras and the Riace Bronzes, used as “testimonials” on the American continent, on board a boat similar to the one that the ancient merchants of the Magna Graecia colonies used for their trade in the Mediterranean.

Sacco also wanted to link his name and his work to the tradition of Italian sacred art, the Calabrian and Mediterranean one in particular, creating numerous works, commissioned to be donated to His Holiness John Paul II, which are now part of the prestigious collection kept in the Vatican Museums. This "artistic eclecticism" has brought him great acclaim and praise from both critics and the general public, so much so that he has become a true ambassador of the Italian goldsmith's art.

In addition to the Vittoriano Complex in Rome and inside the Vatican Museums, Sacco's works of art find space in major events organized by various Italian cultural institutes abroad: such as those in Brussels, Lisbon, Copenhagen and Madrid. He has frequently worked as guest consultant at the Retail Jewelers of America; his creations have appeared in the most prestigious jewellery stores in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and have crossed the borders of the Far East in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Tokyo.

In 1989, on the proposal of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Gerardo Sacco received the honour of Commander of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.