Italian Medals Author:Cornelius von Fabriczy Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE STRUCK MEDALS OF THE CINQUECENTO I THE MEDALS OF THE MEDICEAN COURT THE STRUCK MEDALS OF THE CINQUECENTO THE MEDALS OF THE MEDICEAN COURT |N Fl... more »orence more than elsewhere the practice of the medallic art in the Cinquecento was in closest dependence on the princely Court. Its representatives are the goldsmiths who were kept in full occupation by the lavish and plentiful commissions of the members of the Court, and of whom the city produced a series of excellent masters. In order to rivet their energies still more closely to the Court, the greater number were attracted to the grand- ducal mint, where they found assured and remunerative occupation as wardens, die-engravers, or strikers. Moreover, the special taste shown by some of the grand-dukes for coins and medals offered opportunities to the artists. Vasarirecords of Cosimo I. that in his Guarda-roba—which we should call his "Cabinet of Art"—he kept an immense number of gold, silver, and bronze medals, most beautifully arranged. Of his successor Francesco we are told that he exhibited a part of the grand-ducal collection of coins and medals in the room of the Uffizi now known as the Tribuna, and allowed it to be open to the public—a fact which shows the high esteem in which he held these objects as works of art, and how important he considered it that laymen and artists should be able to enjoy them and gain instruction and culture by the sight. Apart from some masters, such as Salvatore dell' Avacchia, Vincenzo Lupicini, Costantino de' Servi, Domenico Santini, Raffaello Casellesi, Francesco Mocchi, of whom only isolated medals, ascribed to them by recent research with more or less justification, are known, the earliest artist in Florence who claims our notice is Francesco Ortensi, called Dal Prato (1512-1562)....« less