Renaissance Medals

The National Gallery of Art houses the single most important collection of portrait medals in the United States. This two-volume catalogue examines in depth these holdings, comprising more than eight hundred medals. Providing detailed technical information-including the alloy composition of each medal-drawn from careful research, observation, and analysis, Renaissance Medals breaks new ground in the scholarly literature of the field. Included are objects from the Gallery's Widener...
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The National Gallery of Art houses the single most important collection of portrait medals in the United States. This two-volume catalogue examines in depth these holdings, comprising more than eight hundred medals. Providing detailed technical information-including the alloy composition of each medal-drawn from careful research, observation, and analysis, Renaissance Medals breaks new ground in the scholarly literature of the field. Included are objects from the Gallery's Widener Collection, the Baskin Collection, and other recent acquisitions. Medals from the Gallery's Samuel H. Kress Collection, previously published in a catalogue by G. F. Hill and J. Graham Pollard in 1967, are also examined.

Volume 1 of the catalogue focuses on the Gallery's superb collection of Italian Renaissance medals, unique in their quality, number, and diversity. Among the most striking examples in the Italian group is Pisanello's medal commemorating Leonello d'Este's marriage in 1444 to Maria of Aragon, the illegitimate daughter of the king of Naples. The medal's exquisitely detailed reverse depicts Cupid teaching a lion to sing. The tame lion (a clear pun on the name Leonello, whose portrait appears on the obverse) here symbolizes the man softening under the influence of love.

The subject of this charming and sensitively composed marriage medal stands in stark contrast to an intriguing sixteenth-century Italian medal commemorating Lorenzino de' Medici, who murdered his cousin Alessandro de' Medici, the first duke of Florence, in 1537. This medal's reverse adapts the design of the Roman Republican coin issued to commemorate Julius Caesar's murder by Brutus centuries earlier. Republican sympathizers in ducal Florence would have viewed both Brutus and Lorenzino as symbols of resistance against tyranny.

Interested readers should also consult Volume 2 of Renaissance Medals, which documents the Gallery's significant collection of German medals of the sixteenth century, French baroque medals, and smaller, though no less impressive, groups of Netherlandish and English medals. Both landmark volumes will serve scholars and specialists of Renaissance art, as well as those who appreciate history and culture.