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Auction: 390 - Renaissance Plaquettes and Commemorative Medals featuring the Neil A. Goodman Collection - e-Auction
Lot: 41

ANDREA GUACIALOTI, sometime Canon of Prato; Florence and Rome (1435-1495)
Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) Tommaso Parentucelli. "The First Papal Medal", ca. 1453. Commemorating the Fall of Constantinople, Bronze, 78mm. + NICOLAVS.PPA.QVINTVS, .TOMAS. below, Bust left in papal robes, rev. The pope seated, holding a cross and the rudder, in a boat, inscribed ECLESIA, sailing right, signed below the turbulent waves ANDREAS.GVACiALOTIS. The first Papal medal. Early variant A, all those with legends are posthumous. The longitudinal orientation of obverse-reverse may have been intentional to encourage a twisting in the hand to "animate" the rocking boat. Vide: Nathan T. Whitman's "The First Papal Medal: Sources and Meaning", The Burlington Magazine, December 1991, pp. 820-4 (Whitman doesn't accept Hill's assumption that those without inscription were made before the pope died). TNG I, Pl. 17/1. Armand pp. 49/6.
The turbulence on the reverse of the medal likely refers both to the fall of Constantinople after a 53-day siege on May 29, 1453, and the attempted coup led by Stefano Porcari that had been planned for the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 1453. The coup aimed to proclaim a new Republic based on ancient Roman models, arrest Nicholas, kill the curia, abolish the papacy, and place Porcari as the new Tribune of Rome. But it was thwarted in its final days and Porcari was hung on January 9 at Castel Sant'Angelo. Nicholas indeed steadied the Ship of State (Navicella Petris) in the aftermath of the Byzantine disaster, but also saved the church and the papacy by quashing the Porcari revolt.
Leon Battista Alberti, now attached to court and working on an unrealized building programme that would have altered the city (De re aedificatoria was dedicated to Nicholas), left an account of the insurrection in his epistle De Porcario Coniuratione and - although conjecture - it is probable that Alberti had in his possession, just after his tenure in Rimini, de Pasti's recently completed Medallic commissions of their patrons, thus disseminating the Rimini style to the young and impressionable Guacialoti for the execution of his first work. Indeed, the medal of Nicholas owes more to de Pasti than Pisanello and in particular the larger medals of Sigismondo & Isotta. Pierced. A Very Fine contemporary cast. Of the utmost rarity. An Icon. Only two other known specimens, both conditionally problematic in Berlin and Venice. Ex Conan Belleville Lyon, Hotel D'Ainan Sale, May 16, 2019, lot 93.
Also included a Galvano (likely produced in the 1880s) of the ca. 1453 Nicholas Medal, 73mm. Very Fine. (2)
From the Neil A. Goodman Collection

Sold for
$20,000

Starting price
$20000