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CLASSICAL INFLUENCE ON THE ITALIAN MEDALBY G. F. HILLN Italy the one object of anti-quity that turns up in the soilmore often than any other isthe coin, and more often thecoin of Imperial date than theRepublican. That is to say, theportraitsof the rulersof ancientRome must have been familiarto every person, who had the wit to make themout, from these little works of art ratherthan fromthe remains of sculpture. From the days ofPetrarch and Rienzi onwards, Italians possessingthe historic sense looked upon anything whichcould revive the memory of the heroes ofantiquity with something like a passionateaffec-tion. The attitude of these men towards suchremainswas a purely personaland ethical attitude.It was exactly parallel to the attitude whichcritics assumed towards ancient writers, as onemay see, forinstance,in the 'QuaestionesCamaldu-lenses' of Cristoforo Landino, where LeoneBattista Alberti, himself an artist and thinker ofgenius, discourses at length upon the hiddenallegorical significance of the works of Vergil.The poetry, to put it baldly, is regardedmerely assugar for the philosophical pill. If the bestintellects of the day saw great works of art in thislight, it is not surprising-and it would be stupidto say that it is regrettable-that they treatedminor objects in the same way. For their artisticvalue they cared little or nothing. They admiredthem for the moral lessons which they served topoint. Petrarch was, it seems, one of the firstpersons to collect ancient coins, at any rate witha notion that they were not mere curiosities.There have always been, since collecting began,persons who collect simply with the object ofmaking a complete series-an object to whichRoman coins are particularlywell suited-or withthe very human desire of having things whichmost people cannot get; nowadays we have alsoa few persons who look upon such collectionsas scientific material. In the days of which I amwriting this last class practicallydid not exist, butwas replacedby persons who saw in ancient coinsa source of moralinspiration. So far was scientifictruth subordinated in their thoughts to this otherend that,wherethey had no original,theyinallgoodfaith invented the portraitsof the ancients, fromAdam and all the patriarchsdownwards,as maybe seen in one of the earliest illustrated books onthe subject, Rouille's 'Promptuaire des M6dailles'

(Lyons, 1553).1 Not merely engravings, butinnumerable medals were made of persons,legendary or historical, for whose lineamentsthere was no ancient authority. A well-knownmedal of Aristotle, made in the fifteenth century,

gives him the traditional features and headdressof the mediaeval sage. But we have later medalsof Priam, Thales, Artemisia,Lysimachus,and anynumber of others, conceived in a more classicalstyle. A minor medallist,"Camillo Mariani, ofVicenza (1567-1611), drawing his ideas, apparently,from Giacomo Marzari'shistory of Vicenza,pub-lished in 1590, produced imaginary portraits ofCaecina(the general of Vitellius),CorneliusGallus(whom he supposed to be a Vicentine), and Q.Remmius Palaemon, the grammarianand masterof Quintilian. Of these the last has survived[PLATE I, I], and is interesting, if not for itsartisticmerits,at least as an exampleof the way inwhich these restorersof the antiquewent to work.The legend around the head, which for a goodreason no one has fully explained,is taken directlyfrom an inscription said to have been found atVicenza. This inscription is included in all theold collections, fromthe fifteenthcenturyonwards,and has earned at the hands of the Corpus ofLatin inscriptions the title of 'a very old fraud'-fraus antiquissima. The reverseis explained by apassage of Suetonius, who tells us that Palaemon,besides calling Varro a swine, and saying thatliterature had been born and would die withhimself, claimed that Vergil had propheticallymade mention of his name in the Eclogues as afuturejudgeof all poetsand poems. The medallisthas, therefore,shown Palaemon judging betweenMenalcasand Damoetas,with the tag 'venit eccePalaemon' from the Third Eclogue. The headof Palaemondoes not look like a purelyimaginaryhead,nor like an attempt to reproducea classicaltype of portrait,such as must have been familiarto the artist,and I venture to suggest that he hasgiven us the portraitof some friend of his.Anothervarietyof this medalis also in the BritishMuseum. The bust on the obverse is slightlyvaried, and the inscription is merely AVGVS.PRECEPT. L. L. L. On the reverse is a treewith ivy growing round it, and the inscriptionNEC INGENIA MINVS.But to return to Petrarch; he himself tells usof the gems and gold and silver coins, sometimesdamaged by the hoe, which vine-dresserswouldbring to him when he was at Rome, either offer-ing to sell them or asking him to identify theportraits carved thereon.3 In a letter of 1355 hedescribesan audience grantedto him by CharlesIV at Mantua,when he carriedout a long-cherishedplan. He offered the emperor certain gold andsilver coins with the effigies of the ancient emperorsand their inscriptions written in tiny letters, amongwhich was the living and breathing image ofCaesar Augustus; these he presented to him as

1Some of these are reproducedin Courajod'sexcellentlittlebook on 'L'Imitation et la Contrefawondes Objets d'ArtantiquesauxXVeet XVIeSiecles' (Paris,1889).

2 On thisartistsee Morsolinin ' Riv. Italiana di Numism.,'iv,173 ; v, 209.3 Ep. xviii, 8.4Ep. xix, 3; cp. 12.259

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(lassical Influenceon the Italian Medalmemorials of the personswhom he shouldremem-ber, to tread in their steps, to reproduce theirpersonalitiesin his own. So, too, in 1433, Cyriacof Ancona went to meet Sigismund at Siena, onhis way to be crowned emperor at Rome, and,handing him a gold coin of Trajan-evidentlyone of those alluding to his Dacian or Parthianvictories-spoke to him of a crusade against theTurks.5 Of Alfonso the Magnanimous, king ofNaples, the historian6 says that he collected thecoins of the famous emperors, and of Caesarabove all others, seeking with the greatestzeal toacquire them from all over Italy, and preservingthem with almost religious care in an ivorycabinet. By which coins, he used to say, sinceother portraitsof these men no longer existed, hewas marvellously delighted and in a mannerinflamedwith a passion for virtue and glory. Inhis commentary on this passage, Aeneas Sylviussays that Alfonso told him at Puteoli that he hadfound a gold coin of Nero claiming to have closedthe temple of Janus, and this most wise kingcondemned the foolish emperorfor arrogatingtohimself a glory that did not belong to him.If one comes across a remark in this age aboutthe artistic quality of the coins, it is extremelyrare. Ambrogio Traversari,however,writing fromVenice in 1433,7tells the collector, Nicol6 Nicoli,about gold coins of Constantine and Constans--beautiful,indeed, but in no way equal in artisticvalue to one of Berenice which he had also seen.But the aesthetic or scientific point of view is thelast to be reached in the history of collecting.Goethe's collection of Italian medals, now atWeimar, was made, along with his collection ofportraits and autographs, with the object ofbringing the great men of the past vividly beforeus.The ancient coin or medallion, then, notonly made a special appeal to the Italian of theRenaissance,but was able to support that appealby mere force of numbers. So that when FlavioBiondo, writing to Leonello d'Este in 1446, con-gratulatedhim on having placed his portraitandname on coins, after the fashion of the Romanemperors,the validity of the precedentmust havebeen fully acknowledged by everyone at the time,even though they were not coins that Leonellohad caused to be made, but personal medals,between which and the imperialworld-currencyof the Roman empire,authorized and guaranteedby the emperor's image and superscription, anycomparison may now seem to us derisory. What-ever the origin of the Italian medal, it is clear thatancient coins must have exercised some influenceon it.In dealing with classical influence it is often

difficult to say what was derived directly fromantiquitiesnewly discovered,and what was ratherdue to tradition handed down through the middleages and considerablymodified or entirelyrecast-as we have seen in the portraitof Aristotle-in itslong descent. It is obvious thatcertainmedallions,known for convenience as the Duc de Berry'smedallions,representsome aspectsof the traditionabout the Roman emperors at the end of themiddle ages. They, indeed, stand on the border-land between the middleages andthe Renaissance;but while they herald the advent of Pisanello, theyarealso faintlyreminiscentof the large medallionsof the Roman age. Though medallions like thefamous piece of Justinian, once in the Frenchcollection, but destroyed in the great burglaryof1831,8 can never have been common, they weredoubtless to some extent known. There is cer-tainly a reminiscence of some ancient medallionof this sort in one of the two pieces, similar to ormodelled on medals once in the Duc de Berry'scollection, which have come down to us, andrepresent Constantine the Great and Heraclius.The duke possessed not only the original medals,but also copieswhich were speciallymade for him.The pieces which have come down to us areprobably derived from these copies rather thanfrom the originals; at any rate, they seem torepresent Flemish-Burgundian work of the endof the fourteenthcentury,although it is doubtfulwhether any of them are actuallyas old as thatdate. They show in many ways the influence ofthe seal-engraver's art; still they are not madefrom engraved dies, but cast and chased. Theduke'sown specimensof the medals of Constantineand Heraclius were acquired before 1402. Theactual pieces which we possess, together with theratherunusuallycareful description of the othersin the duke's inventories,go to show that theybelonged to a sortof set illustratingcardinaleventsin the history of Christianity.One could spend a long time following up thevarious clues of interest provided by the twoextant medals,9 but they have so often beendiscussedelsewhere that they must be passed overhere. For our present purpose, the interest ofthem lies in their transitional style; in spite oftheirstronglymediaevalfeeling,they pointforward;they are touched, however slightly, with the spiritof the early Renaissance.Now if these pieces, or their originals, werefirst made by Northern artists, they were widelycopied, and became known in Italy. There iseven some considerable probability that they wereknown to Pisanello. But before we proceed to

5Voigt, ' Wiederbelebung ', I, p. 275.6Beccadelli, ' De Dictis et Factis Alph. Regis ', Lib. iI, 12.7 Ep., Lib. viii, 48.

8 Wroth,' Brit. Mus. Catal. of Imperial Byz. Coins', i, p. 25and frontispiece.9They can best be studied in J. von Schlosser's article, ' Diefiltesten Medaillen und die Antike', in the Vienna 'Jahrbuch',xviii (1897). For later literature see my note in ' Numism.Chron.', r9To,pp. 110o ff.260

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ClassicalInfluenceon the Italian Medalthis point, we must glance very briefly at someother precursorsof the Renaissancemedal or coin.It is entirely in keeping with the character andpolicy of that astonishing genius, Frederick II,that he should have made an attempt to revivethe classical style in his coinage. His goldAugustales [PLATE I, 2] are directly inspiredbythe Roman aurei. Although the proportions ofthe bust and head suggest rather the aurei of thefourth century, the laureate head-dress and thereverse type seem rather to go back to some suchemperoras Trajan [PLATE II, 3]. A comparisonof these coins with the miserableordinary moneyof the time shows how far Frederick was inadvance of his age. One other instance we havein the thirteenth century of an attempt to profitby ancient example; that is at Ragusa, where thelittle copper coins with a head on the one side anda view of the city on the other [PLATE II, 4]stand out curiously from the rest of the Europeancoinage of the time. But these modest attemptsfailed hopelessly to influence the general current,or rather stagnation, of the art of coinage. Wemust come down to the end of the fourteenthcentury before we see any further signs of life.It has been remarkedas significant that it wasin Padua, the city where the traditionsof classicallearning were so strong, the city where Petrarchsojourned at the court of the Carrara, that thesesigns are found. There are even those whothink the direct influence of Petrarch is tobe seen in the medals which must next bementioned; but he died in 1374, whereas thesepieces commemorate an event of 1390, and wehave no right to suppose that they had anypredecessorswhich might fall within his lifetime.However that may be, we have here medalsstruckwith dies-not cast and chased, jeweller'sfashion, like the medals of Constantine andHeraclius, nor like the true cast medals of theRenaissance, in which chasing was properlylimitedto clearingawayaccidentalflaws. Further,the obverses of these medals of the two membersot the Carrarafamily (one is illustratedon PLATEI, 5) are most distinctly inspired by Romansestertii. Even the size of the original is adheredto. The reverse,however, is as old-fashioned aspossible; obviously no attempthas been made toimproveon the ordinarymoneyer'sstyle. Nothingcould illustrate better the struggle between classi-cal and Gothic influence. That the date inscribedon these little pieces, commemorating the captureof Carrara by Francesco II, is the date aboutwhich they were made, is proved by a descriptionof one of them in the Duc de Berry's inventories.These then, are the most remarkable among theprecursors of the Renaissance medal proper. TheCarrara pieces, like the coins of Frederick II,however, remained without influence on thedevelopment of the medal. Even in the purely

externalmatterof techniquethey had no influence;nearlyall the medals worth consideration for thenext hundredyears are cast, not struckfrom dies.That is to say, themedallistmakeshis model in waxinstead of sinking his design with the graverin ametal die. Obviously the wax process gave to themedallic art in its infancy just that freedomfromthe old traditions of die-engraving which wasnecessary for its healthy development.In 1438 the Emperor of Constantinople,JohnVIII Palaeologus, came to Italy to attend theCouncil of Ferrara,which had been summonedtoconsiderthe union oftheLatinandGreekChurches.He arrivedthere on February29th, and remaineduntil January Ioth in the next year, when hemoved with the rest of the Council to Florence.During thisperiod the firsttrueRenaissancemedalwas made. Is it not significantthat its subjectwasthe last of any note of that long line of Romanemperors, of which, during the the first fewcenturies of its sway, the series of medallion por-traitsforms one of the most imposing memorials?The emperor is representedtravelling on horse-back; a wayside cross reminds us of the natureofhis mission. There is in this equestrianfigure avague reminiscence of the equestriantypes of theearlier medallions; possibly also of the mediaevalConstantinemedal. There seems also to havebeena second portrait of the emperor by Pisanellowhich represented on its reverse the Cross ofChrist supported by two hands, indicating theLatin and GreekChurches. Such a typeshows justthat general reminiscence of the reverse of theConstantine medal with the Fountain of Lifesurmounted by the Cross and supported by twofigures, for which we might look if the mediaevalpiece in question were known to the artist.Pisanello's debt to his predecessors, whethermediaeval or antique, is alwaysof this sort-a debtnot of wholesale loan, but of suggestion andgeneral stimulation only. That is, of course, trueof every great creative artist.In his case we are able to get below the surfaceof his finished work, thanks to the existence of alarge body of studies and sketches, containedespecially in the famous Vallardi album in theLouvre. What do we find ? A large numberofthe drawings inspired by the antique which areattributedto him are, when critically examined,found not to be his. A certain number of thedrawings are from ancient coins, and of all thesenot one has any sort of claim to be by Pisanello.There is a little signed study of the head of Faustinathe elder, which is very likely his, but it is nottreated in a medallic way, and is placed under aGothic arch [PLATE I, centre]. I should imaginethat the drawing represents part of the design forthe decoration of a library at the court of Mantuaor Ferrara, with Roman busts in niches. On thesame sheet, indeed, is a sketch of one of Pisanello's

a6i

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'lassical Influenceon the Italian Medalpatrons, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga.10 Consideringwhat large numbers of Pisanello's drawings,connected with his own medals aswell as with otherof his works, have come down to us, we should bejustifiedin lookingamong them for some instancesof the study of ancient coins, if he had ever madeany. But there are none. And suggestions drawnfrom other remains of antiquity are scanty. Oneis to be found on the reverseof the noble portraitof the condottiere Niccol6 Piccinino, made about1441. The schemeof the wolf and twins has beenadaptedfor the Perugian she-griffin, who is suck-ling the two soldiers Braccio da Montone and hispupil,as the Romanshe-wolf had suckled the sonsof Mars. Take againthe reverse of one of his latestmedals, that of Don Ifiigo d'Avalos. As on theshield of Achilles, the artist has wrought 'theearth and the heaven and the sea, and also twofair cities of mortal men.' Lacking the poet'slicence, he has beenunableto combine 'theuntiringsun' with 'the waxing moon, and all the signsthat make the crown of heaven'; so he has con-tented himself with the last.There is hardly need for me to reassert whatprobably every critic of the artist now admits--that the famous design of the eagle and otherbirds of prey on the medal of Alfonso of Aragonowes nothing to the type of an ancient coin ofAgrigentum representing two eagles on a hare.As I have said, the coins specially collected at thistime were coins representing famous persons ofantiquity,and it is to be doubted whethercoins ofthe Agrigentinekind would have bulkedlargely inany collection so early in the fifteenth century.In any case, Pisanello's own studies in themenageries of his time and his own powers ofcomposition will amply account for the success ofthis superb design, so far as the subject-matterisconcerned.We must regretthe loss of the wedding presentwhich Pisanello sent to his patron, Leonellod'Este, in 1435-a portrait of Julius Caesar. Itwould tell us more than pages of conjecture whatwas his attitudetowardsancient art. But we maybe sure that,even if in this portraithe attemptedafaithful reproduction of the antique, it was lessbecause he was content with mere imitation, thanout of deference to the tastes of his patron; forCaesar was Leonello's favourite among theancients.Gabriele d'Annunzio has described Pisanelloas not only one among the greatest stylists thathave appeared in the world, but also 'l'anima piiischiettamente ellenica di tutto il Rinascimento';and he is hardly overstating the case. But themedallist, like the sculptor Jacopo della Quercia,who has an equal,if not a stronger,naturalaffinity

with the Greeks,owes nothing to that faculty orinclination for mere imitationof the older model,which is invariablya sign of povertyof conception.And what is true of him is true in a sense of allthe other medallists; as a rule, it is the poorerartistswho resortto mereimitation,but the greatermen use it for such portionsof theirworkas interestthemleast. Astrikinginstanceof this factis affordedby the medals of the Florentine school which areassociated withthe nameof Niccol6 Spinelli. Thereis, apart from the work of the incomparablefounder of the art, no series of medallic portraitsapproachingin excellence those producedby thisartistand his school. But the reversedesigns onthis same series are, it is no exaggeration to say,with few exceptions, poor in conception as inexecution, and quite a number of them are takenbodily from the antique. The group of the threeGraces, found at Rome about 146o, and now atSiena, and the gem with Diomedes holding thePalladium, copied by Donatello in one of themedallions of the Riccardi Palace, both furnishedreversetypes. A curious instance is the 'lifting'of the four horses from the cameo by Atheni on[PLATEI, 8] of Jupiterfighting the giants, now atNaples, to do service in a triumphal car on themedal, cast in 1492, of the youthful Alfonso d'Este[PLATE I, I I]. This cameo has been traced backto the collection of Fulvio Orsini; before his time(he was born in 1529 and died in 16oo) it wasperhapsin some Florentinecabinet. Undoubtedlythe Medicicollections must have had theireffectonthe Mediciartists.There is a littlemedalof Lorenzode' Medici [PLATE I, 7], closely allied in style tothe medal commemorating the Pazzi conspiracy,and thereforenot unreasonablyto be regardedasthe work of Bertoldo di Giovanni or one of hispupils. Whatever his merits as a sculptor andbronze-caster,Bertoldo's skill in the medallic art islimited; and I do not think that even the reverseof this medal of Lorenzo, copied with smallunderstanding from a Roman coin of Trajan[PLATE I, 6], is too bad for him. The interestofthe medal lies in its following its original, whichwas doubtless in the Medici cabinet, so veryclosely, not merely in subject,but in size, just asthe Carraramedals reproducedthegeneralappear-ance of their Roman originals. But whether theartist had the least idea of the significance of hismodel, we may doubt, although we cannot besure either way until someone has explained themeaning of the legend AGITIS IN FATVM.The same tendency to make medals ofapproximately the same size and general appear-ance as the Roman sestertii is perceptible in theseries of pieces associated with the Pope, PaulII.n Both the medals produced during hiscardinalate, and still more the series of small10This, I now think, is the certain identification,thoughformerly('Pisanello', pp. zo5f.) I insistedthat a similarsketchrepresentedNiccol6III d'Este,. This Pope's medals are discussed in detailin a paper inthe 'Numism. Chronicle' for 9gIo.

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CLASSICAL INFLUENCE N TILL ITALIAN IIDAL.

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ClassicalInfluenceon the Italian Medalpieces issued during his tenure of the papal see,follow the ancient model. Paul was, as we know,an enthusiastic collector of coins, ancient andmodern. We have an inventory-very full, asinventories of the time go-of his collection. Oneof his biographersgives an artless account of theskill which he showed in numismatics. He was,says Canensius,a most accurateinvestigatorof allkinds of antiquities,and so good at distinguishingthe portraitsof the emperors on coins of gold orother metals, that he was able to tell the name ofan emperorat the firstglance; he had likewise amost tenacious memory of the emperors andpopes. Evidently just the kind of man to be atthe head of a coin-cabinet, if not of Christendom.He was particularlyfond of burying his medals--many of which bearthe inscription: HAS AEDESCONDIDIT, and a date-in the foundations ofhis buildings, such as the Palazzo di San Marcoin Rome, where they have since been discovered.The historian Platina,who did not love the Pope,who dismissed him from a comfortablepost, hasa curious, if pedantic,remark about this practice.'He used,' he says,' after the ancient custom, todeposit an almost infinite number of coins ofgold, silver or bronze bearinghis portrait,sineullosenatusconsulto,in the foundations of his build-ings, herein imitating the ancients rather thanPeter, Anacletus and Linus.' It would almostappearthat, had the Pope professedto make hismedals with the consent of the sacred college, andplaced on them, like the Roman emperors, theletters S. C., his offence would have seemed lessin the eyes of his biographer. One only of Paul'smedals bearsa type directlycopied from a Romancoin; 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 anotherreverse with a half Roman-sounding legend,LetitiaScholastica. This is signed by themedallistAristotile da Bologna, who may, therefore, havedone the Hilaritas medal as well. But most ofthe medals of Paul were probably made by twoother artists, Andrea da Viterbo and CristoforoGeremia of Mantua. Cristoforo, an artist of novery great powers, was immensely impressed bythe remains of antiquity which he saw aroundhim. His medal of the man who employed himfor some years before he entered the service ofthe Pope in 1465, Cardinal Lodovico Scarampi[PLATEII, I], has a reverse which might havebeen-was, for all I know-copied directly from,not a Roman coin, but a Roman relief. He alsomade a fancy portrait of Augustus [PLATE II, 2],which is interestingin its artlessattemptto repro-duce the antique. The resemblanceto the portraitof Augustusis not too close. The inscriptionis anunintelligent adaptationfrom Roman coins. Onthe reverse we have a Concordia group, ofAugustus and the Empress Livia (not, as she has

been called, Abundance), with the lettersS.C. somuch desired of Platina. A similar Concordiagroup, with an inscription betraying a very rudi-mentary acquaintance with Latin grammar andprosody, is found in the quaint medal of theVenetian doge Pasquale Malipieri (1457-62), byMarco Guidizani.i2 Other Venetian artists seemto betray,in their parade of sympathieswith theantique, the influence of neighbouring Padua:most remarkableamong them is Giovanni Boldfi,who copies the head of the young Caracalla on alarge scale, or signs his name in Greek andHebrew as well as Latin.It would be easy to multiply instances of thiskind. The more sophisticated imitators of theancient style must not, however, be forgotten,although their productions lack the quaintnesswhich makes the work of the others attractive.AlessandroCesati,who worked in Rome for morethan twenty years under Paul III, Julius III,Pius IV and Paul IV, had an enormous repu-tation. A medal of Paul III, with Alexanderthe Great kneeling before the high-priest of theJews on the reverse [PLATE II, 7], is said byVasari to have excited from Michelangelo theexclamation that it represented the acme ofartistic achievement. This is probably one ofthe 'molte novelle et infinite bugie' with whichVasari, as a contemporary and accomplicetells us,13filled his biographies; for the medalstrikesthe modern eye as a singularly frigid andinsipid production. But that the medallist hadsome considerablesuperficialskill in modelling isclear from his rendering of the type of Securitas[PLATE II, 3], which is copied from a Romanoriginal; though the forms lack precision,they arerenderedwith a suppleness of which the Romandie-engraverwas quite incapable.The specimen of this Securitasby Cesati whichis shown in the plate is not the one attachedto theportrait of Pope Paul III, but another whichappearsas the reverseof a fancymedal of Octavian[PLATEII, 3]. Since it was the commonest thingin the world to join together the obverse of amedal by one artist, with the reverse of a medalby another,we cannot be sure that this head ofOctavianis by Cesati. But there is plausibilityinthe attribution,which is dueto Dr. ParkesWeber."4The delicacy and yet dullness of the forms, thelack of precision in modelling, are not un-characteristic of Cesati. The same qualities areseen in a set of medals to which I have alreadyalluded, professing to represent Priam, Artemisiaand Dido [PLATE II, 5, 6, 8]. The Priam hasalready been attributed to Cesati by Dr. ParkesWeber. All three present on the reverse viewsof 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.x 267

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(lassical Influenceon the Italih'anMedalpersons are connected. The medal of Artemisiahas long been known as showing one of theearliestattemptsat restoringthe Mausoleum. Tothese may be added, with great probability, amedal of Alexander the Great [PLATE II, 41 (theattribution is again due to Dr. Parkes Weber).Very strong is the inspirationof Roman historicalreliefin thereverse,which representsAlexandertheGreatriding through a triumphalarch in a quad-rigaofelephants,withthelegendIIEP2IZAAMEOEIIA.The obverse, on the other hand, is copied from agold stater of Alexander the Great,and the artist,like many anotherafterhim, has takenthe head ofthe goddess Athena for a portraitof the king. Tomake everythingquiteclearand satisfactoryhehasdescribedthe head in a queerGraeco-Latinlingo asAAE5ANAPOTAIVO1.Whatever may be the right attribution of thesemedals, the portrait of Octavian [PLATE II, 3]may instructively be compared with two othersrepresentingthe same person. It bears but slightresemblancein its conception to any realportraitof the emperor. The largercast medal [PLATE II,I ], without inscription, is, on the other hand, afine work, very closely, but not slavishly, copiedfrom some antique, and entirely free from thepettiness of style which is apt to result from suchimitation. It probably dates from about 1500oo;Mr. Keary, indeed, attributedit to Riccio, and wemay at least be assured that it is North Italianwork, 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 struckfrom dies, engraved, as a rule, with deliberateintent to deceive; though whether Cavinowas anefariousforger, like KarlWilhelm Becker, ratherthan a well-meaning scholar of misplaced inge-nuity, it is difficult at this time to make out. It issaid that he was assisted in designing his imitationsby the Paduan scholar and antiquary,AlessandroBassiano. Apart from certain slight differencesin technique, due to the use of different gravinginstrumentsand differentmethods of striking, the'Paduans,' as collectors call them, are almostindistinguishable from original Roman coins.Fortunately,a great number of Cavino'sown dieshave been preserved, so that some control ispossible. Cavino was, of course, only the mostnotorious of these mischievous craftsmen. Vasari,e.g., mentions Lodovico, the son of II Marmita,who worked in Rome in the first half of thesixteenth century, a great master of the art of

counterfeiting antique coins, from which hereaped great profit. This, however, is a matterhardly germane to the present subject, for thissort of imitation has been practised at all times,and at none with more success than in thepresent day.

The inference from the examples of antique in-fluence here collected is fairly obvious; at anyrate, it is neither new nor startling; it is indeednoother than can be drawnfrom the study of the re-lations between any one school of art and anearlier school to which directly or indirectly itowes its origin. Imitationof earliermodels, whencarriedbeyond the merelyeducationalstage, is asfatal to sincerity and directnessof vision, as is theanarchicalrejectionof the lessons that they teach ;the greater minds speedily shake off, the smallerareaptto be crushedby, theweight of the exampleslaid upon them. While a school of art had theroot of the matterin it, as the early Italianschoolof medallists had, little harm could be done ; butas soon as the real thing began to be replaced bya more or less academic tradition, the classicalinfluence was too strong, and showed itself in theform of affectation and insincerity. Medals,it istrue, might always be partially redeemed by thefact that, after all, they were usually portraitsofcontemporaries. It is where the Italian artistsgetaway from the interest of individual portraitureand personality that we see the influence of theantiqueat its worst,because the minorItalianartistswere seldom able to supply worthy subject-matterof their own for treatment in this style, and de-pended entirely for the content of their art onwhat they could draw from a dead past. Butfortunatelythe Italian medallistshad, so to speak,a long start before they were caught up again bythe antique. And their sound common-sensehelped them. Nowadays,when an artistreceivesa commission to design a new coinage or to makea medal, he is frequently advised to go and lookat the Greekcoins or Italianmedals in the BritishMuseum. If he has any sense, he says to himself:' These are very beautiful, and doubtless weresuitablefortheir time and purpose,butall they canteach me is that I must make something beautifulandalso suitableto mytimeandmy purpose,whichare different.' That was what the Italian coin.engravertold himself; and insteadof reproducingthe style of Greekor Roman coins, he set to workto modifythe designsof his mediaevalpredecessors,while profiting by his increased technical know.ledge and recently acquired powerof portraiture.The result is seen in the Italian testoons (such asthose of Giovanni II Bentivoglio or GiangaleazzoMariaSforza,illustratedon PLATEII, Io, 12), withtheir characteristicportrait-heads,theirallegoricalor heraldic reverse designs, all in sharp but delicatelow relief-coins that could be stacked and packed,coins suited at once to the artistic tastes and tothe commercial instincts of the people for whomthey were made, coins that are a standing proof ofthe fact that commerce and art are not necessarilyantagonistic.

15On it seems to be based the fancy head of Diocletianillustratedby Courajod(op.cit. p, 16).268This article represents, with certain omissions, a lecturedelivered at the AshmoleanMuseum, Oxford,in MichaelmasTerm, 19go.