NUMISMATICS
157
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-
