Italian medals

Preface

INCE the appearance, between 1881 and 1887, of the great works of Friedlander, Heiss, and Armand, publications on the subject of Italian medals have been confined to special articles in periodicals and a few catalogues of public or private collections. The Medaillen der italienischen Renaissance of Cornelius von Fabriczy (Leipzig, 1903) marks a fresh stage in the progress of the study. Its value as a summary of recent research, and as an independent contribution to the subject, has been generally recognised. It is also of interest as showing how the barrier between the study of medals, regarded from the old-fashioned strictly numismatic view, and the wider study of Italian art is gradually disappearing, to the advantage of both sides. The translation of such a book into the English language suggested itself as obviously desirable. It was at first hoped that the author would be able to revise the text, so that the

V

Preface

English translation would be practically a second edition of his work. As, however, the proposed arrangement broke down, Mrs. Hamilton has simply translated the book as it stands. A few insignificant additions have been made in the footnotes, and distinguished by the use of square brackets. It need hardly be said that the author is in no way responsible for the work in its English form, except in so far as it faithfully renders the German text. I have had the opportunity of revising the translation both in manuscript and in type. The majority of the illustrations are from the same blocks as were used for the original work ; but in the case of the medals by Vittore Pisano and Pasti, and that of Tomaso Rangone, new blocks have been made, in all cases without reduction.

G. F. HILL

British Museum

August, 1904 vi

Contents

PAGE

Preface . . . . . . . v

THE MEDALS OF THE QUATTROCENTO I. Introduction . . . ... 3

II Vittore Pisano And His Successors In North Italy

LIONKLLO D'KSTK. BY PISANO hn,: p. 2b

II

VITTORE PISANO AND HIS SUCCESSORS IN NORTH ITALY

HEN we remember how the idea of posthumous

fame determined the revival of the medal, we shall

not be surprised that, of the two places which gave

birth to the Renaissance, it was not in republican Florence,

but amid the Courts of the splendour-loving and ambitious

princes so numerous in North Italy, that the commemorative

medal first appeared as a fresh means for their glorification.

To Verona, the art-loving city, which throughout the entire

fourteenth century had possessed a school of painters vying in

importance with the Florentine Giottesques, belongs the glory

of having given birth to Vittore Pisano, surnamed Pisanello

(circa 1 380-1451), the creator of the Renaissance medal. We

are not acquainted with the immediate circumstances of his

life ; we only know that, one of the earliest followers of the modern realism, he was widely known as the creator of works of monumental painting and as the most renowned portrait painter of his time beyond the confines of his home as far as Pavia, Mantua, Venice, Ferrara, and Rome, before, within the last decade of his life, he was to add still further to his title to immortality by his new creation in plastic art.

The opinion, which has recently been expressed, that the master may have been inspired thereto by the Flemish- Burgundian imperial medallions already mentioned, is probably justified. In the precious volume of drawings, most of them due to Pisanello, preserved as the Codex Vallardi in the Louvre, are three sketches from his hand for the reverses of medals, which he afterwards adopted in somewhat altered form for one of his medallions of Alfonso of Naples. Here, in the representation of a triumphal car drawn by four horses, the artist has evidently allowed himself to be influenced by the reverse of the Heraclius medal. He doubtless fully believed that he had before him ancient works worthy of imitation, and, inspired by the newly awakened reverence for antiquity, was striving to revive an ancient custom in glorifying in like

manner the rulers of his time. The earliest of his medals, moreover, presents the most remarkable similarities — naturally, apart from style — to the medal of Constantine in size, in method of casting", in the manner of depicting the horseman, in the careful representation of the horse itself, even down to its peculiar amble, and finally in the combination of Greek and Latin inscriptions. This is the medal of John VIII., the last emperor but one of the Palaeologus race, who came to Ferrara in 1438 to implore aid against the Turks from the Council assembled there for the settlement of the schism (Frontispiece).

With it we may class the imposing series of his works —

twenty-four signed pieces with twelve others that may assuredly

be ascribed to him. It is indeed a proud procession of crowned

heads, celebrated princes and tyrants, dreaded condottieri,

renowned statesmen and scholars, that the genius of the

master| places before our astonished and delighted gaze. In

the ardent desire for posthumous fame all have sought to be

immortalised by means of Pisano's spatula and crucible. We

can understand the praise heaped upon these creations by his

contemporaries in verse and prose. It was the sense of the

truly significant, the sublime, consistently displayed in these works, to the exclusion of all trivial ornament or refinement, that won them the approval of the best critics. The gifted artist never fails to seize the character of the individual with unerring directness — faithful and true to life, but ennobled by a stylistic treatment which accentuates only the essential. Masterly is the way in which he catches the bold poise of the head, reproduces the clear strong outline of the profile, gives concentrated expression to passionate ferocity and untamed energy, as well as to high intellectual endowment or profoundly contemplative character. Nay, in the single woman's portrait that we possess by his hand, that of the twenty-threeyear-old Cecilia Gonzaga (1447), later renowned for her learning and piety, he fascinates us by the refined charm of expression, a refinement we had scarcely expected in the pitiless observer of the coarser realism of life (PI. IV.). And all this breathing life is evoked by his genius with the most simple means. His conception of a subject combines the most austere severity with the most attractive freshness ; his modelling, invariably simple, scorns all superfluous detail ; his technique is based on the most intimate knowledge of the material, losing no advantage that it offers, without ever

Plate III

MALATESTA NOVELLO BY PISANO

F.irc J,. 30 seeking to force from it anything unsuited to its nature. Only to speak of examples which we reproduce, how faithfully does the profile portrait (and Pisanello made without exception only profiles) of Palaeologus (1438) depict stiff self-satisfaction ; that of Sigismondo Malatesta (1445) the cold haughtiness and savage determination of this prototype of the tyrant of Renaissance times (PI. II.) ; how does that of his brother Novello, along with the unmistakable family likeness, reveal the gentler character with its susceptibility to noble influences (PI. III.) ; that of Alfonso I. of Naples (1449) candid magnanimity (PI. V.) ; that of Vittorino of Feltre, the much soughtafter humanist teacher, the spiritual features of the scholar (PI. VII., i) ; finally that of Inigo Davalos (PI. VI.) the selfcontained character of the noble Grand Seneschal of King Alfonso.

Almost greater is Pisanello in the designs for his reverses. Without the inspiration of any previous model, his marvellous intuition at once hits on the most appropriate conceptions. What fresh, healthy life is he able to impart to his allegories, thanks not least to. the magnificent animal figures, which he loved to employ, combining a monumental treatment with an intimate penetration of their nature ! What mastery, what restraint he displays in composition and technique, while he avoids pictorial effect no less than the one-sided accentuation of the sculpturesque element and the exaggerated labouring of the relief! How frequently does he thrill the innermost feelings of the beholder by the intimacy of the expression, reaching by apparently the simplest means to undreamt-of depths of soul ! Or can we conceive a more thoughtful symbolisation of the power of love than that on the medal struck in 1444 to celebrate the marriage of Lionello of Este with the daughter of King Alfonso of Naples, where Cupid, holding a sheet of music before the lion — a play upon the name of the giver of the commission — compels the mighty beast to song?^ (PI. I.). Is there any prouder illustration of the motto '* Liberalitas Augusta" on Alfonso's medal than the eagle in its eyrie, distributing its prey to the vultures that surround it ? (The well-known device of Roman imperial coins, as well as the eagle, which

^ The Berlin example, reproduced in our illustration, is a lead cast of great beauty, so finely and surely chased, that Friedlander holds it to be one of the pieces which, according to the account of a contemporary, Pisano himself chased in order to use it as a model for the bronze casting.

Plate lY

CKCILIA GONZAGA. BY PISANO

Far p. 32 appears on the coins of Agrigentum, testifies to inspiration by ancient examples, examples which the artist no doubt found in the royal collection, and to which the sketches in the Vallardi Codex also point.) Is not the entire fascination of Romanticism forestalled in the charming girlish figure of the Gonzaga medal — the maiden who, entrusting her innocence to the protection of the unicorn, sits sunk in dreams in a moonlit, rocky waste ? Finally, does it not border on the marvellous how the figure of Novello Malatesta, in spite of being clad from head to foot in armour, thrills with inward excitement, as with an expression of deepest emotion he kneels before the Saviour, who bends to him from the cross ? Truly, in presence of such creations, it must strike us with surprise that Goethe (in the essay quoted above in the Jena Litteraturzeitung) can only, on the one hand, praise "his naive simplicity and the sincere imitative industry," and on the other censure "his somewhat timid and stiff treatment " ! In Pisanello, indeed, we seek in vain for the conventional flow of line and the academical smoothness of the Caracci and Domenichino, which so charmed Goethe in Italy.

^ 33

Among the medals of Pisanello not attested by his signature, the three portraits of Leone Battista Alberti, ''the universal genius of the Renaissance" par excellence^ which A. Venturi has quite recently ascribed to our artist, claim our especial attention in virtue not only of the person depicted, but also on account of their value as works of art.^ In our opinion only the single specimen in the Louvre (PI. VI L, 4) deserves to be considered, so far as the attribution in question is concerned ; of the two others in the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris and in the Dreyfus collection, we hold the first to be a contemporary imitation of the Louvre medal, the second a restoration of the sixteenth century.^ Alberti dwelt at Ferrara during the time that Pisano was engaged on the medal of Lionello of Este, and, in fact, his portrait, both in style and arrangement, shows many points of similarity with the medal of Lionello. On the other hand, it deviates from all authentic medals of Pisanello in its

' Concerning' Alberti, compare Jacob Burckhardt's Kulttcr der Renaissance, 3rd edition, Leipzig-, 1877, vol. i. p. 168, and Anton Springer's Bilder aus der rieuern Kunstgeschichte, 2nd edition, Bonn, 1886, vol. i. pp. 259 fF.

In order to support this view we ought to reproduce the two other pieces. This, however, is not the right place for such a discussion, which we reserve for another occasion.

ALFONSO I. OF NAPLFS. liY PISANO elliptic form, its unusual dimensions (15^ by 11^ cm.), and also in the absence of a reverse. But the conception is so grand, the excellence of the work so extraordinary, that the new attribution seems to have better claims than that hitherto received (the work had been regarded by some as a portrait of Alberti by himself, by others as the work of Matteo Pasti).

With Pisanello's work begins the continuous series of Quattrocento medals. In his wanderings throughout the whole of Italy he carried his new art from Verona to Naples, and owing to it, much more than to his paintings, everywhere won disciples to the realism of North Italy, so different from the realism of Florence. He found the earliest and most numerous followers in Ferrara. The lords of Ferrara — if the first to embody the idea of the modern ruler, who recognises not rights alone, but also duties — were at the same time genuine sons of the Renaissance ; so that (frequently out of all proportion to the limited resources of their public revenues and at the cost of severe taxation) they indulged their love of splendour and art, and sought to hand down their fame to posterity by artistic works. And that the seeds planted with such intention in native soil — in the first instance by foreign hands — flourished also at home is shown by the works of Ferrarese medallists as well as of the Ferrarese school of painting. The names and creations of a Pleiad of such men, all more or less followers of Pisano, and all of whom found ample occupation and reward at the Court of the Este, have been handed down to us. After 1441 Niccolo Baroncelli, a sculptor of Florentine origin, several of whose ably executed statues in bronze are preserved in the cathedral of Ferrara, cast a medal of Lionello, full of character and inspired by Pisanello; indeed, the design of the reverse is directly borrowed from one of the master's. Amadeo da Milano, who was especially esteemed as a goldsmith, betrays himself as such by a strong relief, by the elegant, almost timid, treatment and careful chasing in the medals which he made of Lionello and Borso d'Este in the forties. On the reverse of one of the Lionello medals, like Baroncelli, he copies Pisanello ; while the reverse of his second medal, with Leda and the swan, is a naively conceived, but skilfully composed circular design.^

^ [This reverse is by most authorities considered to be of later date than the obverse. Cp. Heiss, p. 15.— G. F. H.]

Plate VI

The most important of the native masters, however, is Antonio Marescotti, of whose life, as well as of the lives of the two of whom we have spoken, we know nothing. The seven medals which he has left us bear the dates 1446-1462, and display the portraits of two members of his family, of a Bishop of Ferrara, Duke Sforza of Milan, and Borso d'Este. Finer than these, however, are two medals of San Bernardino of Siena, the zealous reformer of the Franciscan Order, the eloquent and influential wandering preacher, who had sojourned in Ferrara in 1431. Marescotti's medals of the saint, however, cannot have been cast until after his beatification in 1450, since they show his head surrounded by a halo ; all the more remarkable is the truthfulness of the portrait, which was not taken from the life, and in which the ascetic piety of the saint is so touchingly expressed (PI. VII., 5). All the works of Marescotti show something of the severe realism, the strong modelling of Pisanello. Although in this among all Pisanello's successors he approaches nearest to the master, nevertheless he is far from attaining the grand style, the monumental conception, which go hand in hand with these qualities in the Veronese. The insignificant reverses cannot in the least compare with Pisanello's either in choice of subject, in concentration of composition, or, finally, in the mighty cast of the figures. They display for the most part nothing but emblems : thus the medal of San Bernardino bears only the so-called Chrism of his order — the monogram of the Saviour (*' Y.H.S.") enclosed in a nimbus of flames.

Weaker and more indistinct in form and conception are the likenesses of Duke Borso on the medals of Giacomo Lixignolo and Petricini, of Florence, dated 1460 (PI. VII., 6) ; likewise that of Borso's successor, Ercole I., on the medals made twelve years later by Baldassare Estense, a natural scion of the princely house, who seems to have practised art simply as an amateur ; finally, on the medal of M. Coradini, of whose work this single specimen (Pl.VIII., i) and nothing more is known. Its reverse, partly inspired by a coin of Hadrian, shows the figure of the mythological patron of the Duke, as with shield and spear boldly planted he subdues the waves of the sea beside the pillars that bear his name. To pass over a number of anonymous artists, with whom for the most part we are only acquainted in their medals (frequently of excellent workmanship), depicting for the most part members of the

Plate VII

/•>«■(- 38 reigning house, the series of those already named is followed, chronologically speaking, by a highly renowned master of our branch of art, Sperandio of Mantua. But as Ferrara was for scarcely a decade the scene of his labours (1467-1476), and as, on the other hand, he made a much longer sojourn at Bologna, we prefer to treat of him later in company with the Bolognese medallists.

On the other hand, we may here appropriately place two artists from distant Naples, whose inspiration is directly due to the influence of Pisanello. As architects and sculptors Pietro da Milano [circa 1410-1473) and Francesco Laurana {circa 1 430-1 501), whose family came from the place of the same name near Zara, in Dalmatia, were in the service of Alfonso of Naples and his son Ferdinand I. Pietro was the creator of the triumphal arch which was erected after 1455 by King Alfonso at Castel Nuovo to commemorate his seizure of the capital, but which was not finished until the reign of his successor. It is the finest architectural monument of the Renaissance which remains in Naples. Laurana with several other artists took part in its sculptured decoration. But as medallists both men were employed especially in the service of Alfonso's rival and pretender to the kingdom of the two Sicilies, Rene of Anjou, Count of Provence. This prince, one of the few who, north of the Alps, vied with the Italian rulers as a splendid Maecenas of arts and letters, collected around him at his Courts of Aix and Bar-le-duc a legion of poets, scholars, and artists. With them he himself contended in poetry and painting, so that in the joint productions of the courtly band it is frequently difficult to distinguish the work of the patron from that of his proteges. When after Alfonso's death (1458) the building of his triumphal arch was brought to a stand, our two artists obeyed Rene's summons and went to France, there by their medals to provide for the glorification of the love affairs of the elderly monarch at the Court of Love of Provence.

Their works, produced between the years 1461 and 1466, display the portraits of Rene and his second wife Jeanne de Laval, his nearest relations and most trusted counsellors, as also those of Louis XL, King of France. In the matter of artistic merit, a huge gulf divides their works from those of Pisanello,

although his medals of King Alfonso undoubtedly served as

Plate VIII their immediate model. And if either one or other achieves success, then is the credit due more to the source whence they derived their inspiration than to themselves. In Pietro da Milano more especially the dependence on Pisano may frequently be traced even in the designs on the reverses of his medals In the case of the double medal of Rene and his wife (PI. VIII., 2) we are interested less by the vulgar portraits on the obverse, treated with uniform, flat, and expressionless relief, than by the not unskilful composition of the Council scene on the reverse, with its rich Renaissance architecture, the first of its kind on a medal, which betrays the practised hand of the architect. Laurana took less trouble about his designs ; on his medal of John of Anjou, the son of Rene, he simply copies the circular temple of Vesta at Tivoli, and, as an addition of his own, crowns it with a statue of the Archangel Michael. In other cases also he readily allows himself to draw his inspiration from the antique : the Spes Augusti of his medal of Rene and the Concordia Augusta of that of Louis XI. (PI. VIII., 3) are almost literal copies of Roman imperial coins. The last-named medal is, however, Laurana's masterpiece. The cunning craftiness, the suspicion, but at the same time the resolution of this, the first modern despot and incarnate reaction against the ideals and weaknesses of the Middle Ages, are excellently expressed in the portrait. Nevertheless Laurana fails by a long way to reach Pisano's grandeur of style, strength of modelling, and mastery of technique ; in their place he displays now an over-careful, now a superficial imitation of nature, in general a stiff arrangement of the reverse, a flat and characterless treatment of the relief.

Let us return, however, to the home of Pisanello, to Verona, to trace his successors. There we immediately encounter in Matteo de' Fasti an artist who is probably a pupil of the master himself. Born at Verona in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, he meets us with his teacher at Ferrara in 1444, where he fashioned the portrait — so characteristic in its ugliness — of the tutor of princes, the renowned Greek scholar Guarino, then in his seventy-fifth year, and like himself a native of Verona (Fl. XI., i). As early as the following year he accompanied Fisano to the Court of Sigismondo

Malatesta at Rimini, where as architect, sculptor, decorator,

Plate IX

SIGISMONDO MALATESTA. BY I'ASTI painter, draftsman, and medallist, he soon rose to the position of an artistic factotum. Not until 1483, long after the death of his princely patron, did he return to his native city, where he died in 1490. Whether he responded to the summons of the Sultan Mohammed II. at Constantinople ad se pingendum effingendumque, cannot be ascertained.^ From 1447 onwards he superintended at Rimini the building, designed by Leone Battista Alberti, of S. Francesco, the well-known Temple of Fame of Malatesta, and at the same time made the medal of Alberti, the dry style of which, however, contrasts very unfavourably with the life displayed in the medal of Guarino. Some other early Veronese works, the medals of Maflfei and Benedetto Pasti, in their vigorous realism also approach much more nearly to Pisano than do Fasti's later works. On the whole, we cannot agree in the opinion of Friedlander and Heiss, who among all the masters of the Quattrocento rank him second only to Pisano. Goethe forms a more just estimate, when he finds him distinguished by tenderness, repose, simplicity, naivete as well as great carefulness, almost

^ [It appears from a letter, of which an extract is published in L'Arte, iii. p. 145, that Matteo only went as far as Candia, whence he was obliged to return. — G. F. H.]

amounting to timidity, in the presentation of his details. His portraits in general have not the vivid life and the grand ideal cast of those of his master : rather do they show for the most part a certain limitation in conception and a dryness of modelling. But it is especially in the reverses that he proves himself far inferior to Pisanello in inventive genius and overflowing wealth of composition, as also in technical finish in the treatment of the relief ; indeed, in these respects he becomes sometimes flat and insignificant. When he attempts an entirely ideal subject he degenerates into feebleness and prettiness, as we see by his medal of Christ. Nevertheless in moments of inspiration he produced one or two such masterpieces as the finely finished head of Sigismondo as ^'Poliorcetes semper invictus, " a valuable and unique specimen in the Berlin Cabinet, and the best of all the medals which Pasti made of the tyrant of Rimini^ (PI. XI., 2). For, as was proper, our artist was obliged to place his highest talent at

' And yet how much of the essential character of the despot has been sacrificed in Fasti's conception, when compared to the medal of Pisano reproduced above ! Notice the outline of the skull altered to adjust it to the circular form of the medal, the elegant crimping of the hair, the foppish laurel-wreath, which almost transform the fierce tyrant into a petit-niaitre of the Quattrocento! [A better-known medal by Pasti of Sigismondo, with the Rocca Malatestiana on the reverse, is illustrated in Plate IX. — G. F. H.]

Plate X

ISOTTA DEGLI ATTI. BY FASTI the service of his lord and his house ; and thus, as products of his Renaissance period, we possess besides the medal of Alberti, only medals of Malatesta (and there are a dozen) and of the lady who was first his mistress and afterwards his wife, Isotta degli Atti (of whom there are eight different portraits). Divinised by Sigismondo in a monument erected to her during her lifetime with the inscription, Divae Isottae Sacrum," celebrated by him and by the swarm of dependent poets in the elegies of the " Isottaei " on account of her intellectual excellences no less than of her personal charms, Isotta nevertheless on Fasti's medal (PI. X.) appears to us in by no means so extraordinary a light. In her features we can trace kindliness and enjoyment of life, and can perceive the expression of an intelligent mind ; but we search in vain for greatness or the stamp of princely nobility, and are still more unwilling to allow her the charm of intoxicating beauty. The elephant, however, which appears so frequently on the reverse of her medals, symbolises her ruler and husband ; he had chosen it with the motto, " Elephas Indus Culices Non Timet," for his device, or "impresa, " as it was called in the Quattrocento. Here also the Weimar dilettanti have allowed themselves to be carried away in their enthusiasm, when they call the medal of Isotta, "as we may say, unique in feeling, sincerity, and attractive antique simplicity of representation."

Besides Matteo de' Pasti, strange to say, the art of Pisano produced no followers in his native city. Pasti's successors there belong in date, as well as in the style of their works, to the beginning of the Cinquecento, and we shall therefore be obliged to return to them later.

On the other hand, the great Veronese found in neighbouring Mantua immediate successors, although, indeed, in the sequel their style was determined also by other influences. He himself had, as documents prove, repeatedly dwelt in Mantua, for the last time in 1447. The earliest medallist whom we encounter there after him, signing himself on his works as *'Petrus domo Fani," belonged to the little town of this name situated between Ancona and Pesaro. His medal of the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga (PI. XI., 3), the intelligent Maecenas, who succeeded in attracting to his little Court geniuses of the stamp of a Donatello, an Alberti, a Mantegna, shows strong traces

of the spirit of Pisanello, not only in the lifelike and grandly

Plate XI

FASTI, PIETKO DA FANO conceived portrait, but still more in the vigorous, simple composition of the reverse, although its meaning is not so clear as that of Pisano's allegories. Are we intended to find in the legend "Noli me tangere " an allusion to Lodovico's confidence against any attack of the God of Love and at the same time a promise of fidelity to his wife, Barbara of Brandenburg? The Cupid on the reverse, and the title of lieutenant of the Duke of Milan in the legend on the obverse, fix the date of the medal between 1452 and 1457.^ This agrees with the date of the other known medals of our artist, those of the Doge Pasquale Malipieri (1457-62) and his wife, which show the same characteristic excellence and power of expression as those of the Gonzaga. These unique specimens of the Turin and Berlin collections show at the same time that Pietro afterwards transferred his residence to Venice, where, however, every trace of him is lost.

The earliest of Mantua's native medallists is Bartolomeo

* Two medals by Boldii (whom we shall deal with under Venice), dated 1458 and 1466, reproduce with some slight deviations the Cupid of the Gonzaga medals. But as during these years Lodovico was no longer lieutenant of Sforza, his medal must have been the earlier in date, and not imitated from those of Boldili. Moreover, in this case the portrait, which represents the Marquis as from thirty-five to forty years of age, would not accord with the date of his birth (14(4).

Melioli (1448- 1514). His chief energies were displayed as

goldsmith, later also as Warden of the Marquis's mint.

His five medals — not counting that of Christian, King of

Denmark, who passed through Mantua on his way to Rome

in 1474 — all depict members of the reigning family : the

Marquis Lodovico, his son of the same name. Bishop of

Mantua (both cast in 1475), as also his grandchildren

Maddalena and Gianfrancesco H. (PL XH., i), cast before

1484 and before he entered on his rule. The portraits on

these pieces in external respects already differ from those of

Pisano and his followers, in that they are no longer cut off

in a more or less straight line at the bottom, but that in

imitation of antique portrait busts they show a deep bust,