Germain Pilon, The Three Fates, 1586.

Marble, 162 cm. Castle of Écouen,

Musée national de la Renaissance.

 

 

Plaquettes and medallions

 

But bronze is not merely limited to the production of statues or bas-reliefs on a large scale. Many of the artists we have mentioned are only known by works of very small dimensions. They have earned a reputation through little plates, some of which are not more than an inch in length, inscribed with their name and stamped with the seal of their genius. In these cast medallions of the 15th and 16th centuries, we find not only interesting portraits of contemporary celebrities, but also the embodiment of the wonderful vigour of the rising schools of regenerate Italy. We remember the brilliant display exhibited by Dreyfus in the Corps législatif (exhibition for Alsace-Lorraine), a display in which the medallions and plaquettes of Pisanello, Sperandio, Matteo di Pasti, Pollaiuolo, Francia, Riccio, Pastorino, Benvenuto Cellini, and Tuzzo were jostled together. Here, as among the statuettes, we must separate the productions of France. It was certainly no Italian artist that imagined to perpetuate, by imperishable castings, the memory of the horrors of St Bartholomew, or who represented the entry of Henry IV into Paris in the midst of an intoxicated multitude, hurling those suspected of having upheld the League, or favoured the Spaniards, headlong into the Seine.

From bas-reliefs and medallions to medals, the transition is imperceptible, and if science has drawn a line of demarcation between the value and the founders of the medallion, there comes a time when the processes of casting and stamping work so well together that it seems almost arbitrary to separate them.