Currency of Fame - Portrait Medals of the Renaissance

Stephen K Scher, John Bigelow Taylor, Charles Ryskamp, III Earl APowell,

ISBN 10: 0810931915 / ISBN 13: 9780810931916

Published by ABRAMS February 1994, 1994

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 20110104119178

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Currency of Fame - Portrait Medals of the Renaissance
• Publisher: ABRAMS February 1994
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0810931915
• ISBN 13: 9780810931916
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Used - Like New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Back Room - Art - European

About this title

Synopsis

The portrait medal was one of the key sculptural forms of the Renaissance, a manifesto for the humanist cult of personal fame and a vehicle for some of the finest artists of the age. Yet this most subtle and delicate variety of relief sculpture has chiefly been the province of collectors and connoisseurs, viewed as an intriguing branch of numismatics, rather than an art form in its own right. This study explores the great formative period of the portrait medal, and accompanies an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Frick Collection, New York. It combines the expertise of 31 specialists with examples drawn from the finest collections in the world, both public and private. The medallions depict in detail the faces and figures of the famous - Lorenzo de'Medici, Savonarola, Michelangelo, Erasmus, Dilrer, the monarchs of Europe - as well as those whose names live on purely through the splendour of the medals they commissioned. Over 170 specimens, dating from the 1