August, 1920 
37 
A medal by Pisanello (c. 
1441). Obverse, Niccolo Picci- 
nino, condottiere; reverse, the 
Perguian she-griffin suckling 
two infants, Piccinino and his 
master in war, Braccio da 
Montone (1470-1547) 
THE ART OF THE 
ANCIENT 
MEDALISTS 
Finds Expression in These Metal Discs with Their Records of Men and Women Whose 
Portraits Are Thus Preserved for the Delight of the Collector 
GARDNER TEALL 
W HEN Francesco Petrarch was asked by 
Emperor Charles IV to write a volume 
of biographies of illustrious men of all ages, 
and to include the Emperor’s own life in the 
collection, he sent the Emperor a 
number of gold and silver coins 
bearing the portraits of celebrated 
rulers, accompanied by a letter in 
which he wrote, “Behold to what 
men you have succeeded! Behold 
whom you should imitate and ad¬ 
mire! To whose very form and 
image you should compose your 
talents!” 
I do not know how the Em¬ 
peror regarded this honest atti¬ 
tude of Messer Francesco. The 
popular idea of a 14th Century 
Emperor of the Holy Roman Em¬ 
pire and King of Bohemia would 
probably be that, like an Alice in 
Wonderland personage, the Em¬ 
peror would have cried, “Off with 
his head!” But he did nothing 
of the sort, and Petrarch con¬ 
tinued to exchange letters with 
him the remaining years of a life 
of seventy that culminated in 
1374. 
Perhaps Alfonso the Magnani¬ 
mous, King of Aragon, of Sicily 
and of Naples, patron of letters 
and a conspicuous figure of the 
Renaissance to the time of his 
death in 1458, had heard of Mes¬ 
ser Francesco’s epistolary ad¬ 
monition. He undoubtedly held 
the memory of this great human¬ 
ist high in esteem, and he him¬ 
self exhibited an ardent love for 
the classics, turning his court into 
a veritable haven for wandering 
scholars. Alfonso assiduously collected ancient 
coins and contemporary medals, placed them 
in an ivory cabinet which was carried wherever 
he went, and confessed himself as “excited to 
great actions by the presence, as it were, of so 
many illustrious men in their images.” 
Cosimo di Medici formed a great medallic 
collection which Agnolo Poliziano described in 
his Miscellanea in 1490, and the 
medals in the collection of the 
Emperor Maximilian I enabled 
Joannes Huttichius to enrich his 
Lives of the Emperors, published 
in 1525, with a series of likenesses 
engraved from the medallic por¬ 
traits he found in Maximilian’s 
cabinet. The famous French 
bibliophile, Jean Grolier, who 
died in 1565, left behind him a 
famous collection of medals. The 
letters of Erasmus disclose the 
fact that the study of medals was 
begun in the Low Countries as 
early as the beginning of the 16th 
Century. In Hubertus Goltzius’ 
prolegomena to his Life of Julius 
Caesar he gives us to understand 
that about the year 1550 there 
were some 200 medallic collec¬ 
tions in the Low Countries, some 
175 in Germany, over 380 in 
Italy and at least 200 in France 
—nearly a thousand collectors of 
medals must have been living at 
that time! 
The list of noted collectors 
from Renaissance times to our 
own who have given attention to 
medals is so long that it would 
outmeasure Homer’s famous Cata¬ 
logue of Ships. I shall not at¬ 
tempt to begin it, nor shall I 
frighten you away, dear reader, 
by a disquisition on the history 
of coinage. Instead, I shall con- 
(Continued on page 66) 
A Renaissance portrait 
medal worn as a pen¬ 
dant is shown in this 
painting of Marie di 
Medici which hangs in 
the Uffizi Collection, 
Florence 
(Small) Obverse, Pietro Bembo, 
Venetian humanist and cardinal, 
1538. Reverse, Pegasus. The 
medal was executed by Ben¬ 
venuto Cellini 
(Large) Obverse, Cosimo 1 di 
Medici (1519 - 1574); reverse, 
Cosimo crowned by Victory, with 
another recording his military 
triumphs 
