Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/337

 In 1815 he journeyed to London, and he complains that he and his stock of cameos and models were very roughly treated at the Dover custom-house. In London he modelled the portrait of Sir Joseph Banks, and at Banks's house encountered Richard Payne Knight [q. v.], who had called to show a fragmentary cameo (, fig. 121) of ‘Flora’ (or Persephone) purchased by Knight as an antique from the dealer Bonelli for 100l. (some accounts say five hundred and two hundred and fifty guineas). Pistrucci at once explained to Knight that he himself had made it for Bonelli about six years previously at Rome for less than 5l., and that (like all his productions) it bore his private mark. Knight angrily asserted that the cameo was antique, and declared to Banks that the wreath was not of roses, but of an extinct species of pomegranate blossoms. Banks examined it and exclaimed, ‘By God, they are roses—and I am a botanist.’ This incident drew the attention of collectors to Pistrucci, and he began to be patronised, especially by William Richard Hamilton, vice-president of the Society of Antiquaries, for whom he made another ‘Flora’ cameo. Knight's ‘Flora’ (or Persephone) came to the British Museum as part of the Payne Knight bequest; and Knight, in his manuscript catalogue of his gems, persists in describing the wreath as of pomegranate blossoms—‘non rosas, ut B. Pistrucci gemmarum sculptor, qui lapidem hunc se suâ manu scalpsisse gloriatus est, prædicaverat, et se eas ad vivum imitando expressisse, pari stultitia et impudentia asseruit.’

Banks paid Pistrucci fifty guineas for making him a jasper cameo of the head of George III, and in 1816 sent him with it to Wellesley Pole, the master of the mint. Pole directed Thomas Wyon, junior, the chief engraver, to copy it on the half-crown; but the work proved inferior to the model, and was afterwards rejected. Pistrucci showed Pole the wax model for a gem, with the subject of St. George and the Dragon, that he had made for a ‘George’ to be worn by Earl Spencer, K.G. The design was considered suitable as a reverse-type for the new gold coinage, and Pole paid Pistrucci one hundred guineas for making, as a model for the coins, a jasper cameo with this subject. The design (still retained) does not, strictly speaking, owe its origin to Pistrucci. It can be traced back to a shell-cameo, the ‘Bataille coquille,’ in the collection of the Duke of Orleans. This was copied, at least in part, by Giovanni Pikler, whose intaglio with the subject became popular in Rome. Pistrucci himself, when in Italy, had made four copies (two cameos and two gems) of Pikler's intaglio, and on coming to London in 1815 employed the subject for Lord Spencer's ‘George.’ In making the jasper cameo as the model for the coins, he, however, considerably modified the design, and modelled the St. George from the life—the original being an Italian servant belonging to the hotel (Brunet's) in Leicester Square, where Pistrucci was staying. The design first appeared on the sovereign of 1817, and subsequently on the crown of George IV, which Denon, the director of the French mint, called the handsomest coin in Europe.

During the manufacture of the new coinage during 1816 Pistrucci was employed at the mint as an outside assistant. On 22 Sept. 1817 Thomas Wyon [q. v.] died, and Pole offered Pistrucci the post of chief engraver. The appointment was resisted by the ‘moneyers’ (the corporation of the mint), and for several years Pistrucci was attacked and calumniated in the ‘Times’ and other newspapers, chiefly on the ground of his foreign origin. He found a staunch defender in W. R. Hamilton. The office of chief engraver was kept in abeyance, though Pistrucci continued to perform the duties. At last, in 1828, as a compromise, William Wyon, the second engraver at the mint, was made chief engraver, and Pistrucci received the designation of ‘chief medallist.’ Pistrucci engraved part of the coinage at the end of George III's reign, corrected the engraving of the matrices and punches of the silver coins dated ‘1815–17,’ and engraved the coins of the early part of George IV's reign. In 1820–21 he engraved the coronation medal of George IV, and obtained sittings from the king, after refusing to copy Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of George. In 1821, when required to execute a medal commemorating the royal visit to Ireland, he refused to copy the king's bust by Sir Francis Chantrey, and in 1822 declined to reproduce this bust on the coins. He had no share in producing the coronation medal of William IV, as he again refused to copy a bust by Chantrey. The coronation medal of Victoria, which was hastily executed by Pistrucci in three months, gave general dissatisfaction.

In 1838 Pistrucci, on the recommendation of Samuel Rogers, made the silver seal of the duchy of Lancaster. The work was finished in the short space of fifteen days by a process which Pistrucci claimed to have invented, and by which a punch or die could be cast in metal from the artist's wax or clay model, instead of being copied from it with graving tools, as had hitherto been usual (, Medals and Medallions, 1894). The