SUMMARY 



The tides of history since 1800 have borne the art 

 of Italian coin engraving from stagnant shallows to 

 a new, high ground of creative achievement. The 

 opening of the 19th century was marked by a serene 

 recollection of antiquity as expressed in the dignified 

 simplicity of neoclassicism, which soon declined, 

 however, into a tired, anemic intcllectualism. Re- 

 currently, artists turned for inspiration to the exhausted 

 sources of a revived classicism wliich could offer little 

 spiritual guidance in an art bound more and more by 

 ofiicial convention. Quest for perfection was confined 

 to exterior form: coins served chiefly utilitarian 

 purposes. 



As a result, the coinage produced during the tur- 

 bulent mid-century years when national unity was 

 being forged under Victor Emmanuel II marks an 

 amazing low point in Italian engraving. The prod- 

 ucts are cold, su[)erficial: they do not suggest the 

 intellectual and emotional storms which shook those 

 decades. Gone were the eras when the Greek artist 

 enclosed in a small piece of metal part of his own and 

 his countrymen's soul, when Roman engravers 

 portrayed in coarse compositions the political dreams 

 of their leaders, when an esoteric stiffness expressed 

 the awe before king and God which inspired the 

 Middle .Ages. 



An upheaval in this stagnation was caused by 

 public reaction in the years just |)rior to World 



War I. At the same time President Theodore 

 Roosevelt in the United States was instigating an 

 artistic awakening in American coinage, a radical 

 change occurred also in Italian coin engraving. 

 Artists began to create with the stimulating certainty 

 that their products wotild be judged, admired, and 

 criticized. New themes enlivened coin images, re- 

 placing the monotony of previous heraldic coin types. 

 Into the fervor of this competition were drawn en- 

 gravers and especially sculptors of repute, and the 

 first decades of the present century teem with their 

 coin projects. Their experiments reveal a new out- 

 look in solving artistic and technical problems. 



Then, in the twenties. Italian coin engraving evolved 

 into a more definite and uniform art concept. Once 

 again artists gravitated toward the great early sources 

 of classical antiquity, and for over two decades the 

 exuberant images of ancient Greece and Rome filled 

 the imaginations of the engravers, but all too soon this 

 ideal degenerated again into a cliche. 



From this long series of discouraging repetition of 

 classical patterns, declining finally into an oljsessive 

 mannerism, there slowly emerged a new concept — 

 the values of Renaissance art transposed to a modern 

 age. With such esthetics, conveyed through an ele- 

 gant simplicity, Italian coin engravers have found, 

 beyond their other trends, a promising outlook for 

 the fiuure of their art. 



62 



BULLETIN 229 : CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY .AND TECHNOLOGY 



