medal

medal, piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or plaquettes. Most medals are made of gold, silver, bronze, or lead, the precious metals being used for the finer productions. Medals are produced by a variety of techniques: they are cast from a model of wax, wood, or sometimes stone; they are struck from a die engraved in intaglio, the design impressed on the metal by pressure; or they can be produced by the repoussé process, in which two separately worked, interlocking molds containing the blank are brought together under pressure. A positive punch, or hub, can be cut in hard metal and the design stamped into a softer metal, which is then hardened to form a die (thus, many dies can be made from one hub). Machine cutters, introduced in the 19th century, copied mechanically an enlarged electrotype of the original design; but this technique, by eliminating hand cutting, took away much of the medalist’s work.

Italy

It is generally accepted that the modern commemorative medal, in both form and content, was invented by the Italian painter Antonio Pisano (c. 1395–1455), called Pisanello. His first medal portrayed the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus and was made in 1438–39. His medals provided a portable portrait relief of the sitters, reproducible by casting in lead or bronze and small enough to be held in the hand. He placed a profile portrait on the obverse and an allegorical or pictorial scene on the reverse. This formula for the medal has lasted to the present day. Pisanello made medals of 16 sitters for the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan, Naples, and Rimini. Major schools of medal making developed, particularly in Mantua, Florence, the Veneto, and Rome. The papal court had no local school but attracted medalists from all over Italy. Toward the end of the century the portrait effigy became bolder and more sculptural in the work of Niccolò Fiorentino and Sperandio of Mantua.

During the 16th century in Italy the cast medal continued in favour, and Leone Leoni (1509–90) of Milan and Pier Paolo Galeotti were its principal masters. Leoni was engraver at the papal mint in Rome from 1537 to 1540, Master of the Habsburg mint at Milan (1542–45, 1550–59), and court sculptor to Charles V. His most masterly cast medal is of Michelangelo (1561). He also produced struck portrait medals, like those of the Genoese statesman and admiral Andrea Doria. For the first time the struck medal became a common instrument of court propaganda, especially for the popes and for the ruling Medici family in Florence. Galeotti made more than 80 cast portrait medals, which rival the work of Leoni. Pastorino da Siena produced a long series of portraits of sitters of lesser rank, cast in lead without reverse type. The finest struck portraits were the work of the medalists Domenico di Polo and Domenico Poggini in Florence and Giovanni Bernardi, Alessandro Cesati, and Benvenuto Cellini at the papal court. Antonio Abondio drew his style from Leoni and from the charming Mannerist portrait medalists of Reggio nell’Emilia, particularly Alfonso Ruspagiari.

Discover how ordinary objects work, and expand your understanding of the familiar.

SIGN UP

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">

Thank you for signing up!"

Back to homepage

By clicking "Sign Up", you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

France

The earliest French medals were heraldic pieces struck in gold and silver, c. 1455, to commemorate the expulsion of the English. The first portrait medal was a struck gold presentation piece of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, made by local goldsmiths for a visit to Lyon in 1494. Italian medalists had worked in France and directly inspired the work of Jacques Gauvain and Jérôme Henry at Lyon. In 1550 mint officials were sent by Henry II to seek out and obtain German minting machinery, and in consequence numerous propaganda medals were produced, ascribed to the Huguenot goldsmith Étienne Delaune and to Claude de Héry. With the appointment in 1572 of the great Mannerist sculptor Germain Pilon (1535–90) by Charles IX to the new office of “contrôleur général des effigies,” a new form of medal appeared. Pilon produced a superb series of large cast portrait plaques for members of the Valois dynasty and a series of struck medals for Henry III. For Henry IV the Danfrie family produced a series of struck medals. Jean Warin (1604–72) also made elegant cast pieces, and between 1636 and 1670 he held almost a monopoly of the production of struck pieces for the court. Guillaume Dupré (1574–1647) followed Pilon, charmed Henry IV with his portrait medals, and was appointed in 1604 “conducteur et contrôleur général” of the Paris Mint. Nicolas Briot (1579–1646), rival of Dupré, was a lesser master who was a skilled mechanic and engraver general at the Paris Mint from 1600. In 1625 he went to London, where he revived the English court’s interest in the medal.

Germany and Austria

The free imperial cities under the Holy Roman Empire were important centres of patronage, and the sitters were proud burghers depicted in a realistic idiom. A few fine medals are ascribed to Albrecht Dürer, but the first professional medalist was Hans Schwarz of Augsburg, active in Germany and elsewhere between 1512 and 1532. Christoph Weiditz produced numerous Augsburg medals and with Schwarz showed the greatest sensitivity in capturing individual character in his portraits. Friedrich Hagenauer, active in Munich and in Augsburg (1527–32), produced more than 230 medals. In Nürnberg, Matthes Gebel (active 1525–54) and his follower Joachim Deschler (active 1540–69) were the principal medalists. Ludwig Neufahrer worked mainly in Nürnberg and the Austrian Habsburg domains, employed by Ferdinand I from 1545. The Italian expatriate medalist Abondio was called to Vienna and also appointed court medalist by Emperor Maximilian II in Prague in 1566.