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 NUMISMATICS

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NUMISMATICS

connected with the representation of St. Roch and St. Sebastian or of St. Rosalia, as also of the cross with the brazen serpent, as a protection against the plague. There is also an interminable series of wholly super- stitious amulets, astrological and alchemistic coinages which i)rofess to be the product of an alchemistic transmutation from a base into a precious metal. The imperial coin-cabinet at Vienna contains one of these pieces, probalily the largest medal in existence, weighing about 15 '2 lbs. avoirdupois; and adorned with the portraits of forty ancestors of the Emperor Leopold I, in whose presence the transmutation is supposed to have taken place. Thus the numerous and manifold purposes for which the medal has been employed faithfully reflect the cultural conditions which led to its coinage and are a source of informa- tion that has not yet been fully appreciated.

True medals were unknown to antiquity; their func- tions were in many respects — particularly as memo-

bracteate perpetuates the memory of a pilgrimage of Duke Boleslav III to the tomb of St. Adalbert in Gnesen. A denier of Ladi.slaus I of Bohemia shows the repulsive head of Satan with a descriptive legend on one side, and on the other a church. Luschin was able to account for this device as follows: after a suc- cession of serious elemental disturbances in Bohemia there came, in the midst of a terrible hurricane, a meteoric shower, during which many persons declared they beheld Satan in human form near the castle; this denier was then struck, bearing on either side the head of Satan and the Church of God. Such coins as these in some measure serve the purpose of com- memorative medals.

The first true medal appeared in Italy towards the close of the fourteenth century. Francesco II Car- rara, Lord of Padua, had two medals struck, in imita- tion of the ancient Roman medallions: one, in memory of his father, Francesco I, recalls the later medal-

Bronze Medal of Leonello d'Este, 1444 — bt Vittore Pisano The reverse shows Cupid holding a music scroll and a lion singing

rials of important events — performed by coins. In contrast with the monotonous and generally inartistic coins of the present day, the coins of antiquity, and more particularly those of Greece, were masterpieces of the art of the die-engraver, who was not compelled to seek other opportunities to display his skill. Among the liomans conditions were analogous, with the exception that the medallions of the emperors ap- proximate somewhat to the character of our medals, although they are, as a rule, duplicates of the legal monetary unit; the tokens (tessera;), struck for the games, and the contorniates are even more closely related to the medal. The few gold issues of the Emperor Louis the Pious (814-40) also resemble medals, and in the further course of the Middle Ages we meet with a large number of coins which were evi- dently intended to commemorate some event in his- tory, although their devices are often very difficult to explain; there is many a puzzle here still awaiting .solution. As the symbol of Henry the Lion, the powerful Duke of Bavaria and Saxony, the lion plays an important role on his coins. But his adversary, Otho of Wittelsbach, who, when Henry the Lion had been outlawed, received the Duchy of Bavaria, em- ployed this symbol also and issued deniers which pic- ture him in pursuit of a lion or with the severed head of a lion in his hand. Coins are also very frequently used to commemorate enfeoffments, and these bear a representation of the liege lord from whom the kneeling vassal receives the gonfalon. A Polish

lions of Commodus and Septimius Severus; the other, commemorating the capture of Padua in 1390, has a portrait of Francesco II analogous to that of the Em- peror Vitellius on his sesterces. The reverse in each case bears the punning device of the Carrara family, a cart (carro). These medals are struck in bronze and silver. To the same period belong the medal-like trial-pieces made by the Sesto family of Venice, a family of die-cutters. These, too, were stamped ; but the de- veloijment of the medal in the next period was not due to sliLiiipi'd i)icces. Even before the middle of the fiftcciitli century ItaUan art suddenly reaches the cli- max in this department with the cast medal. Vittore Pisano, a painter (b. about 1.380, in the Province of Verona; d. 145.5 or 1456) is the oldest and most impor- tant of the medallists. Like those of his followers, his works are cast from wax models or models cut in iron, a process which frequently makes it necessary for the pieces to be afterwards chiselled. He signs his work opus Pisani pidoris. The medals are, for the most jjart, of large size, and arc coated with an artificial patina. On the obverse they present expressive por- traits, gci\ci-ally in profile; on the reverse, l)eautiful and ingenious allegories: thus of Leonello d'Este, a lion singing from a sheet of music h<'ld by C'upid; or of Alfonso of Najjles, an eagle that generously gives up the slain deer to the vultures. Even though it can be proved that Pisano made us<' of certain iirototypes which in turn were possibly derived from seals, his fame as the real creator of the medallic art is not ma-