This selection of Italian medals from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is part of a much larger collection generously gifted to the Frick by Stephen K. and Janie Woo Scher.
In fifteenth-century Italy, medals emerged as a new genre of art. Though not used as currency, they carried other kinds of value. The classical inspiration for these works can be seen in medals such as that of the poet Jacopo Sannazaro or in Antico’s figure of Fortune standing on a globe, flanked by a naked youth and a female figure. However, artists and their patrons did not just seek to replicate ancient prototypes. They wanted to add something new. Look, for example, at the cryptic scene in Pisanello’s medal of Leonello d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara—two men carrying baskets of olive branches while rain falls upon and extinguishes two flaming vessels.
Italian medals of this period combine a portrait on the front, or obverse, and on the back, or reverse, typically a more inventive scene surrounded by carefully placed (and usually classicizing) lettering. Different alloys were used to achieve different textures. The skillful combination of these elements resulted in medals that were consistent in terms of format but new in terms of content and composition.
Medals quickly became an accepted currency of social value, a conduit for self-promotion, both for the artist and the sitter. Often exchanged among friends, they prompted social interactions and recorded people for posterity. Medals could also commemorate specific historical events. Many of the artists whose works are at the Frick and many of the patrons for whom works at the Frick were made produced and commissioned medals. Bertoldo’s famous medal memorializing Giuliano de’ Medici—brother of Lorenzo the Magnificent—who was killed during the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, both condemns the killing and exalts Lorenzo, its innovative design breaking with the traditional conventions of Renaissance medals. While Jonghelinck’s medal of the belligerent Duke of Alba is reminiscent of the artist’s own bust and full-length statue of the same sitter, Alessandro Vittoria’s medal of his friend Pietro Aretino competes, if in a very different medium, with the portrait by Titian. Both Jonghelink’s bust and
Titian’s portrait are displayed in the previous gallery. Military power is also evoked in Danese Cattaneo’s medal of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, whose closest advisor was Aretino himself.
The Pazzi Conspiracy with the Head of Lorenzo de' Medici (obverse) and Giuliano de' Medici (reverse)
Unlike any other Renaissance example, the Pazzi Conspiracy medal collapses the traditional obverse and reverse, fusing the portraits, allegorical figures, and historical narrative. The medal commemorates the attempted coup led by the Pazzi family against the Medici brothers in April 1478. Each side shows one brother's bust hovering above a bird's-eye view of the attack in the Florentine cathedral, depicted in a continuous narrative. On Lorenzo's side, a priest leads mass within the octagonal choir. In the right foreground, Lorenzo—identifiable by his hat and swishing cloak—defends himself from conspirators not once but twice before fleeing the danger through the choir, resulting in the SALVS PVBLICA [public safety] achieved for Florence. On the reverse, the scene is observed from the other side of the choir. In the left foreground, Giuliano, wearing a long cloak, is accosted before collapsing on the floor to the right, where he is stabbed to death, leading to the LVCTVS PVBLICVS [public mourning] felt as the result of his martyrdom.
