Identifier: italiamedal00fabri (find matches)
Title: Italian medals
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Fabriczy, Cornelius von, 1839-1910
Subjects: Medals Medals, Renaissance Renaissance
Publisher: London : Duckworth
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Getty Research Institute

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ourmaster has immortalised, we mention as two of the mostsuccessful the medals of Lorenzo Tornabuoni (PI. XXIV., 5)and his young wife Giovanna Albizzi (PI. XXIV., 3). Thesetwo it was who, shortly after their marriage in i486, wereglorified by Botticelli in the frescoes at the Villa Lemmi, nearFlorence (now in the Louvre). Judging from the youthfulaspect of the married pair, their medals must have beenproduced about the same period. Our interest is still furtherroused by the tragic fate of both. Giovanna died after havinggiven birth to her third child, and when barely thirty-one years old Lorenzo, with four of his associates, wasbeheaded in 1497 as a participator in the conspiracy for therestoration of the banished Medici to Florence. The reverseof his medal displays a barocco winged Mercury; that ofGiovanna—also in its modelling one of Niccolos mostbeautiful creations—a copy of the group of the Three Graces, which now stands in the Library of the Cathedral of Siena, 124 Plate XXIV
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Face p. 124 Florentine Medals and was probably excavated in the last quarter of the fifteenthcentury in Rome. The restorations on the medal of thearms—which are missing in the marble statue—correspond,curiously enough, even to the flowers in the hands of thegoddess, with an ancient painting from Herculaneum ; itfollows that Niccolo must here have employed as model acameo in the Medicean collection, which had served the samepurpose in the fresco of fifteen hundred years earlier. Thesame reverse is also borne by the medal of Pico dellaMirandola, one of the most consummate of our artists works(Plate XXIV., 4). Who does not recognise in this work theglorious ideal figure of this Knight of the Intellect, besidewhom we, on this side the Alps, mutatis mutandis^ can onlyperhaps place Ulrich von Hutten ? Who has not felt himselfuplifted by Picos far-seeing and entirely unprejudiced Dis-course on the Dignity of Mankind, which Jacob Burckhardtjustly calls one of the noblest legacies of this

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