MEDALLIC ART
What a marvelous field for enjoyment is opened to the collector by
medallic art! To the uninitiated any coin or medal a hundred years old
will seem instantly to suggest an almost prohibitive value. Nothing
could be more of a mistake. As a matter of fact interesting coins and
medals are within the reach of almost any one for a remarkably small
outlay. Of course tremendous prices are given for tremendous rarities,
but coin-and medal-collectors in America seem more interested in early
coined United States cents which exhibit this slight variation or that,
than in collecting for purely the beauty and the historic charm medallic
art exhibits.
Perhaps I should not quarrel with such, for this state of affairs has,
in times past, permitted my acquiring for pennies lovely medals and
marvelously beautiful coins, while they were paying out, in the same
sales, small fortunes for ugly broken-down coppers whose sole virtue
(in my sight) lay in their containing half their face-value of pure
copper!
But we need not linger over these. Let us take thought of the _real_
masterpieces of the times that were and the times that are. We must
include the remarkable productions of our contemporary medalists,
inheritors of the skill and best traditions of past masters.
In the first place, medallic art, more than any other, perhaps, nearly
always displays prominent national characteristics; so it is
comparatively easy to distinguish between the medals of various
countries.
The debt history owes to coins and medals, for the clues to the past
they have given it, is enormous. Cities and sites have been identified
by their means, dates of dynasties made certain by their evidence, and
forgotten deeds of heroes recalled through their records. A few years
ago a Sicilian peasant is said to have discovered the only specimen
extant of a rare coin of antiquity that adds certainty to our knowledge
of the site of Abacænum, whose ruins lie outside the walls of Tripi.
As Vasari observed, the art of the medalist is “a work most difficult by
artists as it holds the mean between painting and sculpture.” That it
does, truly, as any collection of early medals and the best medals of
to-day conclusively proves. At the end of the fifteenth century the
making of dies as it was then practised permitted only designs for very
low relief to be struck and of small circumference--such a size as we
see in the coins of that time. Coins like the United States double eagle
designed by Saint-Gaudens could not then have been attempted. Stamping
from the die was a process yet in its infancy and was not then able to
meet the requirements of striking the larger medal forms; hence these
were invariably cast. First a model in wax was made and embedded in some
fine molding-substance, such as earth or charcoal. Having fitted itself
perfectly into every crevice of the wax model, this mold of earth was
stiffened by a lye solution; the wax was melted out, and molten metal
was poured from a crucible into the mold which was left behind. Whether
or not replicas were made from the same mold is a question that remains
unsolved. Probably not, but instead they may have been made from the new
molds of new wax models formed in plaster molds from plaster casts of
the originals. When removed from its mold the medal was worked over with
a fine gritty substance, and often with finishing instruments. Moreover,
the edges had to be filed smooth, as the casting always left them
rough. In many cases it is apparent that engraving was resorted to in
order that outlines might be emphasized, especially in indicating hair.
In very early days medals afforded a convenient kind of portrait for
transmission to distant friends; large numbers of medals, too, were
buried under the foundations of buildings erected by a prince or a
state, as in our own time coins are placed under the corner-stone of a
public edifice. For instance, in the cellar walls of the Palazzo Venezia
in Rome, built by Pope Paul II, twenty medals of that pope were found.
Some bore on the reverse a representation of the palace, others the arms
of the pope with the legend: “Has Ædes Condidit.” They were enclosed in
an earthenware case that had to be broken in order to release the
contents. It is safe to assume that nearly all early medals bearing
representations of buildings were cast for like commemorative purposes.
It remained for the beginning of the sixteenth century to witness the
inauguration of the art of striking medals from engraved dies. In the
British Museum there is an example of a medal of Pope Julius II by
Francesco Francia the painter, who besides being a painter and a
medalist was also a goldsmith and likewise designed the font of italic
type for Aldus Manutius the printer. This medal of Pope Julius was
probably struck about the year 1506. It and the medals of Benvenuto
Cellini in the Museo Nazionali in Florence (which latter medals are
perhaps the finest examples of struck medals of the period, though by no
means the most artistic) occasionally turn up in public sales. They, of
course, command top-notch prices, although a truly fine gold coin from
Cellini’s dies, a coin of undoubted authenticity, was purchased in
London by the author for two pounds, and from a dealer of international
reputation.
When Francia and Cellini were engraving their dies the new method was
still confined to medals of smaller circumference, for all the larger
ones as yet continued to be cast, even down to the end of the sixteenth
century; and of course casting is a method in very general use to-day.
The modern process of reducing models by means of a clever mechanical
instrument enables the medalist to work out the relief without size
restrictions, from which the reduced size desired for the medal is
finally obtained with absolute fidelity. In fact, modern medals are
often produced in various sizes by an ingenious mechanical process,
without any loss in effect from the same original. Roty’s medal for the
French Alpine Club is such an example.
One may see that the change from casting to striking medals greatly
affected the art of the medalist. The preparation of the model for
casting required a technique almost identical with that of the sculptor
preparing for a bronze statue, the sculptor in marble of course having
to take into account further matters incident to the substance he was
finally to work in. On the other hand, the die-engraver’s art required a
totally different technique, a skill akin to the requirements of
gem-engraving and also to the craft of a goldsmith. When cast medals
became reduced to the size of struck medals, the reduction required
finer workmanship in the original modeling and in the finishing. This
again brought the medalist nearer the goldsmith. Accordingly, we find
Francia, Cellini, Valerio Belli, Cesati, Annibale Fontana, Leone Leoni,
and others at once goldsmiths or gem-engravers and medalists.
It is interesting to visit some museum collection and compare a _cast_
medal by Pisano with a _struck_ medal by Cellini, or with one by
Bernardi, in order to note their differences. Very often the extreme
fineness in finish of early Italian medals makes them appear at first
sight struck when in reality they have been cast. This is especially
noticeable in the medals of Pastorino of Siena, who very nearly brought
medallic portraiture to its perfection. His manner is full of delicacy
and beauty, but it just misses the mark in requisite vigor.
There are various medals intimately connected with American history,
though many of them have been executed by alien artists. However, with
the example set by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frederick Mac Monnies, Victor
D. Brenner, Paul Manship, James Earle Fraser, John Flanagan, and others,
it is to be hoped that more of our artists will turn to this field and
that more encouragement, public and private, will be given in it. We
might well emulate the attention that has been given to the subject in
France.
Fine medals and coins should be tenderly treated. Every scratch mars
their beauty. Each should be kept protected from abrasion. It is
vandalism to subject a medal or coin to an unskilled scouring or
scraping. The early Italians were greatly interested in medallic art and
appreciated beautiful medals as perhaps no other people has ever done.
There are, of course, those soulless persons who find in a medal or an
uncurrent coin only a suggestion of something that might once have been
spent but which cannot be now, and who, with a shrug, refuse to share
the enthusiast’s pleasure. The collector must not hope to win such to
the interest with which medallic art is invested.