Stephen K. Scher, ed. Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal.

(Garland Studies in the Renaissance.) London and New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. 240 pp. index. $60. ISBN: 0-8153-2074-4.

In this most recent collection of essays on the Renaissance portrait medal, twelve leading international scholars explore topics ranging from monographic investigations of fifteenth-century Italian artists to the theoretical codification of propaganda medals in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century France. The papers represent the proceedings of two symposia held in conjunction with the impressive exhibition The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals in the Renaissance; the exhibition opened in early 1994 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, moved to The Frick Collection, New York, then to the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh. Conferences were held at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (sponsored by the American Numismatic Society) and in Edinburgh, respectively in the spring and fall of 1994. The symposia volume acts as an informed and authoritative extension of the sumptuous Currency of Fame catalogue (ed. Stephen Scher [New York, 1994]), providing topical and synthetic analyses relating to objects in the exhibition and to Renaissance medals in general. A number of the authors in the present volume also contributed entries to the Currency of Fame catalogue.

As a single-volume overview of contemporary scholarship on medals, Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal effectively supplements the proceedings from a symposium sponsored by the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in 1984 (Graham Pollard, ed., Studies in the History of Art, vol. 21, Italian Medals, [1987]). Though the CASVA publication focused exclusively on Italian medals, Perspectives expands the discussion to include transalpine material; even so, nine of the twelve essays are concerned predominantly with Italy, only two deal with Germany, and but one examines France.

Scholarship on Renaissance medals has been substantially aided in the past twenty-five years by the publication of numerous public and private collection catalogues (among them, the Italian collections at Florence, Milan, and Berlin, and the French medals at the British Museum), introductory surveys (notably Mark Jones' The Art of the Medal), and periodicals specific to the medium (The Medal and Medaglia). Also valuable have been the published proceedings from conferences (such as that at CASVA, as well as the symposia sponsored by FIDEM [Federation Internationale de la Medaille] and the British Art Medal Society), various exhibition catalogues, the reissuing of important historical works such as G. F. Hill's Corpus of Italian Medals before Cellini, and Hill's pus-like compendia (including Toderi and Vannel's three volumes on sixteenth-century Italian medals, and more recently Attwood's two volumes on Italian medals ca. 1530-1600 in British collections). In spite of this apparent attention, the Renaissance medal remains marginal to most historical inquiries of the period; more often than not, its role has been relegated to the illustration of a personality or, less frequently, an event in socioeconomic discourses. Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal takes an important step in redressing that unfortunate bias.

The volume begins with an exemplary introduction to the Renaissance portrait medal by Stephen Scher, who also wrote the front matter, introduction, and several entries for The Currency of Fame. Raymond Waddington then addresses the paragoni argument evident in Pisanello's medals, and perceptively reexamines the nature of ekphrasis. Joanna Woods-Marsden's adept contextualization of several medals, their sitters, and the imagery used to sustain their precarious power also successfully raises important questions regarding Renaissance statecraft and its inherent misogyny. Kristin Lippincott explores the relationship between imprese and Quattrocento medallic reverses through a concise history of heraldic imagery. Graham Pollard continues the discussion of medallic reverses slightly later and correctly questions Pastoureau's problematic conclusions regarding uniface metals (though, as Waldman's essay makes manifest, caution must be used when assuming that Lysippus' exquisite self-portrait with a polished reverse was made for a woman). Louis Waldman's insightful essay focuses on one medallist, the perplexing but crucially important Lysippus, suggesting that the Quattrocento artist was in fact a humanist dilettante and papal legate, designing medals only occasionally and usually for friends; Waldman also presents a believable solution to the riddle of the medallist's adopted name. John Cunnally's perceptive overview examines our inherited modern prejudices regarding a medal's reliance on antique models. Particularly instructive in his description of the struck medals and coin portraits of the Quattrocento, Alan Stahl explores fifteenth--and sixteenth-century mint masters in Milan, Venice, Rome, and abroad. Philip Attwood's discriminating examination of Giovanni Bernardi, an artist better known for his engraved compositions in rock crystal (and to a lesser extent, the bronze plaquettes derived from those glyptic works), supplements documentary evidence with the careful analytical tools of a connoisseur.

The book then turns north of the Alps, albeit briefly. Jeffrey Chipps Smith illuminates the emergence of German medals ca. 1518, focusing on the mutual, germinal influences of Hans Burgkmair and Konrad Peutinger on the medals of Hans Schwarz. Hermann Maue leads an informed discussion of the classical imagery found on the often-ignored Erzgebirge medals (the only essay in this volume not primarily concerned with portrait medals). Mark Jones' contribution completes the volume by analyzing the theoretical determinants of the exhaustive Histoire Metallique (1702) commemorating the reign of Louis XIV: "... the moment when the medal was transformed from a support for imprese, devices, and emblems ... into a medium intended to communicate widely, both to contemporaries throughout Europe and to posterity, precise facts about specific events" (221). This final essay serves as an appropriate foil to the function, intent, and aesthetic of the previous centuries' medals, and, as such, Jones' essay tugs on a thread common to the majority of the articles, illuminating disparate channels and motivations for medallic patronage.

Perspectives might serve as a state of the discipline on medallic research, though it is unfortunate that other leaders in the field were not included. Luke Syson's paper on portrait medals of women from the New York symposium was published elsewhere, and it is curious that no Italian scholars contributed: one would like to have heard from the Toderi-Vannel team in Florence, or Rodolfo Martini at the Castello Sforzesco, Milan. Ingrid Weber and Douglas Lewis are also conspicuous by their absence.

The volume is copiously illustrated, but the reproductions do not follow any apparent standard regarding the actual sizes of the respective objects (diameters are provided in their descriptions) and they are collected rather awkwardly at the end of each essay; incorporating the images into their respective texts would have facilitated comparison, reduced the large number of repeated illustrations (in particular, Pisanello's reverses), and eliminated the complicated numbering system (which undoubtedly caused the captions and/or illustrations to be reversed for Figures 1.12a and 1.12b, 3.14a and 3.14b, 11.2a and 11.2b, 11.12a and 11.12b, as well as the accidental repetition of Figure 12.2a for 12.3 and Figure 12.8b for 12.9). Despite these (very) minor shortcomings, Perspectives on the Renaissance Medal emerges as an intelligent, creative, and highly rewarding contribution to our knowledge of an often neglected, but immensely important discipline.

ARNE R. FLATEN

Coastal Carolina University