CLASSICAL INFLUENCE ON THE ITALIAN MEDAL
BY G. F. HILL
N Italy the one object of anti-
quity that turns up in the soil
more often than any other is
the coin, and more often the
coin of Imperial date than the
Republican. That is to say, the
portraitsof the rulers of ancient
Rome must have been familiar
to every person, who had the wit to make them
out, from these little works of art ratherthan from
the remains of sculpture. From the days of
Petrarch and Rienzi onwards, Italians possessing
the historic sense looked upon anything which
could revive the memory of the heroes of
antiquity with something like a passionate affec-
tion. The attitude of these men towards such
remains was a purelypersonaland ethical attitude.
It was exactly parallel to the attitude which
critics assumed towards ancient writers, as one
may see, for instance, in the 'QuaestionesCamaldu-
lenses' of Cristoforo Landino, where Leone
Battista Alberti, himself an artist and thinker of
genius, discourses at length upon the hidden
allegorical significance of the works of Vergil.
The poetry, to put it baldly, is regardedmerely as
sugar for the philosophical pill. If the best
intellects of the day saw great works of art in this
light, it is not surprising-and it would be stupid
to say that it is regrettable-that they treated
minor objects in the same way. For their artistic
value they cared little or nothing. They admired
them for the moral lessons which they served to
point. Petrarch was, it seems, one of the first
persons to collect ancient coins, at any rate with
a notion that they were not mere curiosities.
There have always been, since collecting began,
persons who collect simply with the object of
making a complete series-an object to which
Roman coins are particularlywell suited-or with
the very human desire of having things which
most people cannot get; nowadays we have also
a few persons who look upon such collections
as scientific material. In the days of which I am
writing this last class practically did not exist, but
was replaced by persons who saw in ancient coins
a source of moral inspiration. So farwas scientific
truth subordinated in their thoughts to this other
end that, wherethey had no original,they in all good
faith invented the portraits of the ancients, from
Adam and all the patriarchsdownwards,as may
be seen in one of the earliest illustrated books on
the subject, Rouille's 'Promptuaire des M6dailles'
(Lyons, 1553).1 Not merely engravings, but
innumerable medals were made of persons,
legendary or historical, for whose lineaments
there was no ancient authority. A well-known
medal of Aristotle, made in the fifteenth century,
1Some of these are reproducedin Courajod'sexcellent little
book on 'L'Imitation et la Contrefawondes Objets d'Art
antiques aux XVeet XVIe Siecles' (Paris, 1889).
gives him the traditional features and headdress
of the mediaeval sage. But we have later medals
of Priam, Thales, Artemisia,Lysimachus,and any
number of others, conceived in a more classical
style. A minor medallist,"Camillo Mariani, of
Vicenza (1567-1611), drawing his ideas, apparently,
from Giacomo Marzari'shistory of Vicenza, pub-
lished in 1590, produced imaginary portraits of
Caecina (the general of Vitellius), Cornelius Gallus
(whom he supposed to be a Vicentine), and Q.
Remmius Palaemon, the grammarianand master
of Quintilian. Of these the last has survived
[PLATE I, I], and is interesting, if not for its
artistic merits, at least as an example of the way in
which these restorersof the antique went to work.
The legend around the head, which for a good
reason no one has fully explained,is taken directly
from an inscription said to have been found at
Vicenza. This inscription is included in all the
old collections, from the fifteenthcenturyonwards,
and has earned at the hands of the Corpus of
Latin inscriptions the title of 'a very old fraud'-
fraus antiquissima. The reverse is explained by a
passage of Suetonius, who tells us that Palaemon,
besides calling Varro a swine, and saying that
literature had been born and would die with
himself, claimed that Vergil had prophetically
made mention of his name in the Eclogues as a
future judge of all poets and poems. The medallist
has, therefore, shown Palaemon judging between
Menalcas and Damoetas, with the tag 'venit ecce
Palaemon' from the Third Eclogue. The head
of Palaemon does not look like a purely imaginary
head, nor like an attempt to reproduce a classical
type of portrait,such as must have been familiar
to the artist, and I venture to suggest that he has
given us the portrait of some friend of his.
Another varietyof this medal is also in the British
Museum. The bust on the obverse is slightly
varied, and the inscription is merely AVGVS.
PRECEPT. L. L. L. On the reverse is a tree
with ivy growing round it, and the inscription
NEC INGENIA MINVS.
But to return to Petrarch; he himself tells us
of the gems and gold and silver coins, sometimes
damaged by the hoe, which vine-dressers would
bring to him when he was at Rome, either offer-
ing to sell them or asking him to identify the
portraits carved thereon.3 In a letter of 1355 he
describes an audience granted to him by Charles
IV at Mantua,when he carriedout a long-cherished
plan. He offered the emperor certain gold and
silver coins with the effigies of the ancient emperors
and their inscriptions written in tiny letters, among
which was the living and breathing image of
Caesar Augustus; these he presented to him as
2
On this artistsee Morsolinin ' Riv. Italianadi Numism.,'iv,
173 ; v, 209.
3 Ep.
xviii, 8.
4 Ep. xix, 3; cp. 12.
259
(lassical Influenceon the Italian Medal
memorialsof the persons whom he should remem-
ber, to tread in their steps, to reproduce their
personalities in his own. So, too, in 1433, Cyriac
of Ancona went to meet Sigismund at Siena, on
his way to be crowned emperor at Rome, and,
handing him a gold coin of Trajan-evidently
one of those alluding to his Dacian or Parthian
victories-spoke to him of a crusade against the
Turks.5 Of Alfonso the Magnanimous, king of
Naples, the historian6 says that he collected the
coins of the famous emperors, and of Caesar
above all others, seeking with the greatest zeal to
acquire them from all over Italy, and preserving
them with almost religious care in an ivory
cabinet. By which coins, he used to say, since
other portraitsof these men no longer existed, he
was marvellously delighted and in a manner
inflamed with a passion for virtue and glory. In
his commentary on this passage, Aeneas Sylvius
says that Alfonso told him at Puteoli that he had
found a gold coin of Nero claiming to have closed
the temple of Janus, and this most wise king
condemned the foolish emperor for arrogatingto
himself a glory that did not belong to him.
If one comes across a remark in this age about
the artistic quality of the coins, it is extremely
rare. Ambrogio Traversari,however, writing from
Venice in 1433,7tells the collector, Nicol6 Nicoli,
about gold coins of Constantine and Constans--
beautiful,indeed, but in no way equal in artistic
value to one of Berenice which he had also seen.
But the aesthetic or scientific point of view is the
last to be reached in the history of collecting.
Goethe's collection of Italian medals, now at
Weimar, was made, along with his collection of
portraits and autographs, with the object of
bringing the great men of the past vividly before
us.
The ancient coin or medallion, then, not
only made a special appeal to the Italian of the
Renaissance,but was able to support that appeal
by mere force of numbers. So that when Flavio
Biondo, writing to Leonello d'Este in 1446, con-
gratulatedhim on having placed his portrait and
name on coins, after the fashion of the Roman
emperors, the validity of the precedent must have
been fully acknowledged by everyone at the time,
even though they were not coins that Leonello
had caused to be made, but personal medals,
between which and the imperial world-currency
of the Roman empire, authorized and guaranteed
by the emperor's image and superscription, any
comparison may now seem to us derisory. What-
ever the origin of the Italian medal, it is clear that
ancient coins must have exercised some influence
on it.
In dealing with classical influence it is often
5Voigt, ' Wiederbelebung ', I, p. 275.
6 Beccadelli, ' De Dictis et Factis Alph. Regis ', Lib. iI, 12.
7 Ep., Lib. viii, 48.
260
difficult to say what was derived directly from
antiquities newly discovered, and what was rather
due to tradition handed down through the middle
ages and considerablymodified or entirelyrecast-
as we have seen in the portrait of Aristotle-in its
long descent. It is obvious that certain medallions,
known for convenience as the Duc de Berry's
medallions,representsome aspects of the tradition
about the Roman emperors at the end of the
middle ages. They, indeed, stand on the border-
land between the middle ages and the Renaissance;
but while they herald the advent of Pisanello, they
are also faintlyreminiscent of the large medallions
of the Roman age. Though medallions like the
famous piece of Justinian, once in the French
collection, but destroyed in the great burglaryof
1831,8 can never have been common, they were
doubtless to some extent known. There is cer-
tainly a reminiscence of some ancient medallion
of this sort in one of the two pieces, similar to or
modelled on medals once in the Duc de Berry's
collection, which have come down to us, and
represent Constantine the Great and Heraclius.
The duke possessed not only the original medals,
but also copies which were speciallymade for him.
The pieces which have come down to us are
probably derived from these copies rather than
from the originals; at any rate, they seem to
represent Flemish-Burgundian work of the end
of the fourteenth century, although it is doubtful
whether any of them are actually as old as that
date. They show in many ways the influence of
the seal-engraver's art; still they are not made
from engraved dies, but cast and chased. The
duke'sown specimens of the medals of Constantine
and Heraclius were acquired before 1402. The
actual pieces which we possess, together with the
rather unusually careful description of the others
in the duke's inventories, go to show that they
belonged to a sort of set illustratingcardinalevents
in the history of Christianity.
One could spend a long time following up the
various clues of interest provided by the two
extant medals,9 but they have so often been
discussed elsewhere that they must be passed over
here. For our present purpose, the interest of
them lies in their transitional style; in spite of
theirstrongly mediaevalfeeling,theypoint forward;
they are touched, however slightly, with the spirit
of the early Renaissance.
Now if these pieces, or their originals, were
first made by Northern artists, they were widely
copied, and became known in Italy. There is
even some considerable probability that they were
known to Pisanello. But before we proceed to
8 Wroth,' Brit. Mus. Catal. of Imperial Byz. Coins', i, p. 25
and frontispiece.
9 They can best be studied in J. von Schlosser's article, ' Die
filtesten Medaillen und die Antike', in the Vienna ' Jahrbuch',
xviii (1897). For later literature see my note in ' Numism.
Chron.', r9To,pp. 110o ff.
 ClassicalInfluenceon the Italian Medal
this point, we must glance very briefly at some
other precursorsof the Renaissancemedal or coin.
It is entirely in keeping with the character and
policy of that astonishing genius, Frederick II,
that he should have made an attempt to revive
the classical style in his coinage. His gold
Augustales [PLATE I, 2] are directly inspired by
the Roman aurei. Although the proportions of
the bust and head suggest rather the aurei of the
fourth century, the laureate head-dress and the
reverse type seem rather to go back to some such
emperor as Trajan [PLATE II, 3]. A comparison
of these coins with the miserable ordinary money
of the time shows how far Frederick was in
advance of his age. One other instance we have
in the thirteenth century of an attempt to profit
by ancient example; that is at Ragusa, where the
little copper coins with a head on the one side and
a view of the city on the other [PLATE II, 4]
stand out curiously from the rest of the European
coinage of the time. But these modest attempts
failed hopelessly to influence the general current,
or rather stagnation, of the art of coinage. We
must come down to the end of the fourteenth
century before we see any further signs of life.
It has been remarkedas significant that it was
in Padua, the city where the traditionsof classical
learning were so strong, the city where Petrarch
sojourned at the court of the Carrara, that these
signs are found. There are even those who
think the direct influence of Petrarch is to
be seen in the medals which must next be
mentioned; but he died in 1374, whereas these
pieces commemorate an event of 1390, and we
have no right to suppose that they had any
predecessors which might fall within his lifetime.
However that may be, we have here medals
struck with dies-not cast and chased, jeweller's
fashion, like the medals of Constantine and
Heraclius, nor like the true cast medals of the
Renaissance, in which chasing was properly
limited to clearingaway accidentalflaws. Further,
the obverses of these medals of the two members
ot the Carrarafamily (one is illustrated on PLATE
I, 5) are most distinctly inspired by Roman
sestertii. Even the size of the original is adhered
to. The reverse, however, is as old-fashioned as
possible; obviously no attempt has been made to
improveon the ordinarymoneyer'sstyle. Nothing
could illustratebetter the struggle between classi-
cal and Gothic influence. That the date inscribed
on these little pieces, commemorating the capture
of Carrara by Francesco II, is the date about
which they were made, is proved by a description
of one of them in the Duc de Berry's inventories.
These then, are the most remarkable among the
precursors of the Renaissance medal proper. The
Carrara pieces, like the coins of Frederick II,
however, remained without influence on the
development of the medal. Even in the purely
external matterof technique they had no influence;
nearly all the medals worth consideration for the
next hundred years are cast, not struck from dies.
That is to say, the medallistmakeshis model in wax
instead of sinking his design with the graver in a
metal die. Obviously the wax process gave to the
medallic art in its infancy just that freedom from
the old traditions of die-engraving which was
necessary for its healthy development.
In 1438 the Emperor of Constantinople,John
VIII Palaeologus, came to Italy to attend the
Council of Ferrara,which had been summoned to
consider the union of the Latinand GreekChurches.
He arrived there on February 29th, and remained
until January Ioth in the next year, when he
moved with the rest of the Council to Florence.
During this period the first true Renaissancemedal
was made. Is it not significant that its subject was
the last of any note of that long line of Roman
emperors, of which, during the the first few
centuries of its sway, the series of medallion por-
traits forms one of the most imposing memorials ?
The emperor is represented travelling on horse-
back; a wayside cross reminds us of the nature of
his mission. There is in this equestrianfigure a
vague reminiscence of the equestrian types of the
earlier medallions; possibly also of the mediaeval
Constantinemedal. There seems also to have been
a second portrait of the emperor by Pisanello
which represented on its reverse the Cross of
Christ supported by two hands, indicating the
Latin and GreekChurches. Such a type shows just
that general reminiscence of the reverse of the
Constantine medal with the Fountain of Life
surmounted by the Cross and supported by two
figures, for which we might look if the mediaeval
piece in question were known to the artist.
Pisanello's debt to his predecessors, whether
mediaeval or antique, is always of this sort-a debt
not of wholesale loan, but of suggestion and
general stimulation only. That is, of course, true
of every great creative artist.
In his case we are able to get below the surface
of his finished work, thanks to the existence of a
large body of studies and sketches, contained
especially in the famous Vallardi album in the
Louvre. What do we find ? A large number of
the drawings inspired by the antique which are
attributedto him are, when critically examined,
found not to be his. A certain number of the
drawings are from ancient coins, and of all these
not one has any sort of claim to be by Pisanello.
There is a little signed study of the head of Faustina
the elder, which is very likely his, but it is not
treated in a medallic way, and is placed under a
Gothic arch [PLATE I, centre]. I should imagine
that the drawing represents part of the design for
the decoration of a library at the court of Mantua
or Ferrara, with Roman busts in niches. On the
same sheet, indeed, is a sketch of one of Pisanello's
a6i
 'lassical Influenceon the Italian Medal
patrons, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga.10 Considering
what large numbers of Pisanello's drawings,
connected with his own medals as well as with other
of his works, have come down to us, we should be
justifiedin looking among them for some instances
of the study of ancient coins, if he had ever made
any. But there are none. And suggestions drawn
from other remains of antiquity are scanty. One
is to be found on the reverse of the noble portrait
of the condottiere Niccol6 Piccinino, made about
1441. The scheme of the wolf and twins has been
adapted for the Perugian she-griffin, who is suck-
ling the two soldiers Braccio da Montone and his
pupil, as the Roman she-wolf had suckled the sons
of Mars. Take again the reverse of one of his latest
medals, that of Don Ifiigo d'Avalos. As on the
shield of Achilles, the artist has wrought 'the
earth and the heaven and the sea, and also two
fair cities of mortal men.' Lacking the poet's
licence, he has been unable to combine 'theuntiring
sun' with 'the waxing moon, and all the signs
that make the crown of heaven'; so he has con-
tented himself with the last.
There is hardly need for me to reassert what
probably every critic of the artist now admits--
that the famous design of the eagle and other
birds of prey on the medal of Alfonso of Aragon
owes nothing to the type of an ancient coin of
Agrigentum representing two eagles on a hare.
As I have said, the coins specially collected at this
time were coins representing famous persons of
antiquity, and it is to be doubted whether coins of
the Agrigentinekind would have bulked largely in
any collection so early in the fifteenth century.
In any case, Pisanello's own studies in the
menageries of his time and his own powers of
composition will amply account for the success of
this superb design, so far as the subject-matter is
concerned.
We must regret the loss of the wedding present
which Pisanello sent to his patron, Leonello
d'Este, in 1435-a portrait of Julius Caesar. It
would tell us more than pages of conjecture what
was his attitudetowards ancient art. But we may
be sure that, even if in this portrait he attempted a
faithful reproduction of the antique, it was less
because he was content with mere imitation, than
out of deference to the tastes of his patron; for
Caesar was Leonello's favourite among the
ancients.
Gabriele d'Annunzio has described Pisanello
as not only one among the greatest stylists that
have appeared in the world, but also 'l'anima piii
schiettamente ellenica di tutto il Rinascimento';
and he is hardly overstating the case. But the
medallist, like the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia,
who has an equal,if not a stronger,naturalaffinity
10This, I now think, is the certain identification, though
formerly ('Pisanello', pp. zo5 f.) I insisted that a similarsketch
representedNiccol6 III d'Este,.
262
with the Greeks, owes nothing to that faculty or
inclination for mere imitation of the older model,
which is invariablya sign of poverty of conception.
And what is true of him is true in a sense of all
the other medallists; as a rule, it is the poorer
artistswho resort to mere imitation, but the greater
men use it for such portions of theirwork as interest
them least. A strikinginstanceof this fact is afforded
by the medals of the Florentine school which are
associatedwith the name of Niccol6 Spinelli. There
is, apart from the work of the incomparable
founder of the art, no series of medallic portraits
approaching in excellence those produced by this
artist and his school. But the reverse designs on
this same series are, it is no exaggeration to say,
with few exceptions, poor in conception as in
execution, and quite a number of them are taken
bodily from the antique. The group of the three
Graces, found at Rome about 146o, and now at
Siena, and the gem with Diomedes holding the
Palladium, copied by Donatello in one of the
medallions of the Riccardi Palace, both furnished
reverse types. A curious instance is the 'lifting'
of the four horses from the cameo by Atheni on
[PLATEI, 8] of Jupiterfighting the giants, now at
Naples, to do service in a triumphal car on the
medal, cast in 1492, of the youthful Alfonso d'Este
[PLATE I, I I]. This cameo has been traced back
to the collection of Fulvio Orsini; before his time
(he was born in 1529 and died in 16oo) it was
perhaps in some Florentine cabinet. Undoubtedly
the Medici collections must have had their effect on
the Mediciartists. There is a little medal of Lorenzo
de' Medici [PLATE I, 7], closely allied in style to
the medal commemorating the Pazzi conspiracy,
and therefore not unreasonably to be regardedas
the work of Bertoldo di Giovanni or one of his
pupils. Whatever his merits as a sculptor and
bronze-caster,Bertoldo's skill in the medallic art is
limited; and I do not think that even the reverse
of this medal of Lorenzo, copied with small
understanding from a Roman coin of Trajan
[PLATE I, 6], is too bad for him. The interest of
the medal lies in its following its original, which
was doubtless in the Medici cabinet, so very
closely, not merely in subject, but in size, just as
the Carraramedals reproducedthe general appear-
ance of their Roman originals. But whether the
artist had the least idea of the significance of his
model, we may doubt, although we cannot be
sure either way until someone has explained the
meaning of the legend AGITIS IN FATVM.
The same tendency to make medals of
approximately the same size and general appear-
ance as the Roman sestertii is perceptible in the
series of pieces associated with the Pope, Paul
II.n Both the medals produced during his
cardinalate, and still more the series of small
This Pope's medals are discussed in detail in a paper in
the 'Numism. Chronicle' for 9gIo.
 4 4

5 5

6
6

8 v.

10
IO

II
CLASSICAL INFLUENCE ON THE ITALIAN MEDAL.
PLATE I
 3 o

ItA

II 12
iO

8Fl

PLATE

CLASSICAL INFLUENCE N TILL ITALIAN IIDAL.

 ClassicalInfluenceon the Italian Medal
pieces issued during his tenure of the papal see,
follow the ancient model. Paul was, as we know,
an enthusiastic collector of coins, ancient and
modern. We have an inventory-very full, as
inventories of the time go-of his collection. One
of his biographersgives an artless account of the
skill which he showed in numismatics. He was,
says Canensius, a most accurate investigator of all
kinds of antiquities, and so good at distinguishing
the portraitsof the emperors on coins of gold or
other metals, that he was able to tell the name of
an emperor at the first glance; he had likewise a
most tenacious memory of the emperors and
popes. Evidently just the kind of man to be at
the head of a coin-cabinet, if not of Christendom.
He was particularlyfond of burying his medals--
many of which bear the inscription : HAS AEDES
CONDIDIT, and a date-in the foundations of
his buildings, such as the Palazzo di San Marco
in Rome, where they have since been discovered.
The historian Platina, who did not love the Pope,
who dismissed him from a comfortable post, has
a curious, if pedantic, remark about this practice.
'He used,' he says,' after the ancient custom, to
deposit an almost infinite number of coins of
gold, silver or bronze bearing his portrait,sine ullo
senatus consulto,in the foundations of his build-
ings, herein imitating the ancients rather than
Peter, Anacletus and Linus.' It would almost
appear that, had the Pope professed to make his
medals with the consent of the sacred college, and
placed on them, like the Roman emperors, the
letters S. C., his offence would have seemed less
in the eyes of his biographer. One only of Paul's
medals bears a type directly copied from a Roman
coin; that is the Hilaritas Publica [PLATE I, Io],
modelled on Hadrian's coin with Hilaritas P.R.
[PLATE I, 9]. It is similar in style to another
reverse with a half Roman-sounding legend,
Letitia Scholastica. This is signed by the medallist
Aristotile da Bologna, who may, therefore, have
done the Hilaritas medal as well. But most of
the medals of Paul were probably made by two
other artists, Andrea da Viterbo and Cristoforo
Geremia of Mantua. Cristoforo, an artist of no
very great powers, was immensely impressed by
the remains of antiquity which he saw around
him. His medal of the man who employed him
for some years before he entered the service of
the Pope in 1465, Cardinal Lodovico Scarampi
[PLATEII, I], has a reverse which might have
been-was, for all I know-copied directly from,
not a Roman coin, but a Roman relief. He also
made a fancy portrait of Augustus [PLATE II, 2],
which is interesting in its artlessattempt to repro-
duce the antique. The resemblanceto the portrait
of Augustus is not too close. The inscription is an
unintelligent adaptationfrom Roman coins. On
the reverse we have a Concordia group, of
Augustus and the Empress Livia (not, as she has
x 267
been called, Abundance), with the letters S.C. so
much desired of Platina. A similar Concordia
group, with an inscription betraying a very rudi-
mentary acquaintance with Latin grammar and
prosody, is found in the quaint medal of the
Venetian doge Pasquale Malipieri (1457-62), by
Marco Guidizani.i2 Other Venetian artists seem
to betray, in their parade of sympathies with the
antique, the influence of neighbouring Padua:
most remarkableamong them is Giovanni Boldfi,
who copies the head of the young Caracalla on a
large scale, or signs his name in Greek and
Hebrew as well as Latin.
It would be easy to multiply instances of this
kind. The more sophisticated imitators of the
ancient style must not, however, be forgotten,
although their productions lack the quaintness
which makes the work of the others attractive.
Alessandro Cesati, who worked in Rome for more
than twenty years under Paul III, Julius III,
Pius IV and Paul IV, had an enormous repu-
tation. A medal of Paul III, with Alexander
the Great kneeling before the high-priest of the
Jews on the reverse [PLATE II, 7], is said by
Vasari to have excited from Michelangelo the
exclamation that it represented the acme of
artistic achievement. This is probably one of
the 'molte novelle et infinite bugie' with which
Vasari, as a contemporary and accomplice
tells us,13 filled his biographies; for the medal
strikes the modern eye as a singularly frigid and
insipid production. But that the medallist had
some considerable superficialskill in modelling is
clear from his rendering of the type of Securitas
[PLATE II, 3], which is copied from a Roman
original; though the forms lack precision, they are
rendered with a suppleness of which the Roman
die-engraverwas quite incapable.
The specimen of this Securitas by Cesati which
is shown in the plate is not the one attachedto the
portrait of Pope Paul III, but another which
appearsas the reverseof a fancy medal of Octavian
[PLATEII, 3]. Since it was the commonest thing
in the world to join together the obverse of a
medal by one artist, with the reverse of a medal
by another, we cannot be sure that this head of
Octavian is by Cesati. But there is plausibility in
the attribution,which is due to Dr. Parkes Weber."4
The delicacy and yet dullness of the forms, the
lack of precision in modelling, are not un-
characteristic of Cesati. The same qualities are
seen in a set of medals to which I have already
alluded, professing to represent Priam, Artemisia
and Dido [PLATE II, 5, 6, 8]. The Priam has
already been attributed to Cesati by Dr. Parkes
Weber. All three present on the reverse views
of the cities or monuments with which these
12 BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, Dec., 190o7,p. 148, P1.III, 2.
1- Don MiniatoPitti; see Gaye, ' Carteggio', i, iSo, note.
14' Numism. Chron.', 1897, pp. 314
ff.
 (lassical Influenceon the Italih'anMedal
persons are connected. The medal of Artemisia
has long been known as showing one of the
earliest attempts at restoring the Mausoleum. To
these may be added, with great probability, a
medal of Alexander the Great [PLATE II, 41 (the
attribution is again due to Dr. Parkes Weber).
Very strong is the inspiration of Roman historical
relief in the reverse,which representsAlexander the
Great riding through a triumphal arch in a quad-
rigaof elephants, with the legend IIEP2IZ AAMEOEIIA.
The obverse, on the other hand, is copied from a
gold stater of Alexander the Great, and the artist,
like many another after him, has taken the head of
the goddess Athena for a portraitof the king. To
make everything quite clear and satisfactory he has
described the head in a queer Graeco-Latinlingo as
AAE5ANAPOT AIVO1.
Whatever may be the right attribution of these
medals, the portrait of Octavian [PLATE II, 3]
may instructively be compared with two others
representing the same person. It bears but slight fact that, after all, they were usually portraits of
resemblance in its conception to any real portrait
of the emperor. The larger cast medal [PLATE II,
I ], without inscription, is, on the other hand,
fine work, very closely, but not slavishly, copied
from some antique, and entirely free from the
pettiness of style which is apt to result from such
imitation. It probably dates from about 1500oo; pended entirely for the content of their art on
Mr. Keary, indeed, attributedit to Riccio, and we
may at least be assured that it is North Italian
work, if not definitely Paduan.'5 It is, however,
very different from the later imitations [PLATE II,
9] which come from the hand of the Paduan,
Giovanni Cavino (c. 1500-1570). These are struck
from dies, engraved, as a rule, with deliberate
intent to deceive; though whether Cavino was a
nefarious forger, like Karl Wilhelm Becker, rather
than a well-meaning scholar of misplaced inge-
nuity, it is difficult at this time to make out. It is
said that he was assisted in designing his imitations
by the Paduan scholar and antiquary,Alessandro
Bassiano. Apart from certain slight differences
in technique, due to the use of different graving
instruments and different methods of striking, the
'Paduans,' as collectors call them, are almost
indistinguishable from original Roman coins.
Fortunately, a great number of Cavino's own dies
have been preserved, so that some control is
possible. Cavino was, of course, only the most
notorious of these mischievous craftsmen. Vasari,
e.g., mentions Lodovico, the son of II Marmita,
who worked in Rome in the first half of the
sixteenth century, a great master of the art of
counterfeiting antique coins, from which he
reaped great profit. This, however, is a matter
hardly germane to the present subject, for this
sort of imitation has been practised at all times,
and at none with more success than in the
present day.
15On it seems to be based the fancy head of Diocletian
illustratedby Courajod(op. cit. p, 16).
268
The inference from the examples of antique in-
fluence here collected is fairly obvious; at any
rate, it is neither new nor startling; it is indeed no
other than can be drawn from the study of the re-
lations between any one school of art and an
earlier school to which directly or indirectly it
owes its origin. Imitation of earlier models, when
carried beyond the merely educational stage, is as
fatal to sincerity and directness of vision, as is the
anarchical rejectionof the lessons that they teach ;
the greater minds speedily shake off, the smaller
are apt to be crushed by, the weight of the examples
laid upon them. While a school of art had the
root of the matter in it, as the early Italian school
of medallists had, little harm could be done ; but
as soon as the real thing began to be replaced by
a more or less academic tradition, the classical
influence was too strong, and showed itself in the
form of affectation and insincerity. Medals, it is
true, might always be partially redeemed by the
contemporaries. It is where the Italian artistsget
away from the interest of individual portraiture
a and personality that we see the influence of the
antiqueat its worst,becausethe minor Italianartists
were seldom able to supply worthy subject-matter
of their own for treatment in this style, and de-
what they could draw from a dead past. But
fortunately the Italian medallists had, so to speak,
a long start before they were caught up again by
the antique. And their sound common-sense
helped them. Nowadays, when an artist receives
a commission to design a new coinage or to make
a medal, he is frequently advised to go and look
at the Greek coins or Italian medals in the British
Museum. If he has any sense, he says to himself:
' These are very beautiful, and doubtless were
suitable for their time and purpose,but all they can
teach me is that I must make something beautiful
and also suitable to my time and my purpose,which
are different.' That was what the Italian coin.
engraver told himself; and instead of reproducing
the style of Greek or Roman coins, he set to work
to modify the designs of his mediaevalpredecessors,
while profiting by his increased technical know.
ledge and recently acquired power of portraiture.
The result is seen in the Italian testoons (such as
those of Giovanni II Bentivoglio or Giangaleazzo
MariaSforza, illustratedon PLATEII, Io, 12), with
their characteristic portrait-heads,their allegorical
or heraldic reverse designs, all in sharp but delicate
low relief-coins that could be stacked and packed,
coins suited at once to the artistic tastes and to
the commercial instincts of the people for whom
they were made, coins that are a standing proof of
the fact that commerce and art are not necessarily
antagonistic.
This article represents, with certain omissions, a lecture
delivered at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in Michaelmas
Term, 19go.