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Auction: 8004 - An Important Collection of Renaissance Medals & Plaquettes
Lot: 108

Sperandio of Mantua (born c. 1425-28, died after 1504) Pietro Bono Avogario, bronze medal, 86mm., a later cast, grey-brown patina, pierced at 12 o´clock, a later cast Obverse: bust of Pietro in profile to the left, elderly and with long hair, wearing cap and gown, PETVS· BONVS· AVOGARIVS· FERRARIENSIS· MEDICVS· INSIGNIS· ASTROLOGVS INSIGNIOR· Reverse: Aesculapius standing at left, on a dragon, holding a phial in his right hand and a brance in his left, and Urania standing at right, on a terrestrial sphere, holding an astrolabe in her right hand and an open book in her left, in field to left ·AESCV-LAPIVS·, in field to right ·VRAN-IE·, below the rocky ground · OPVS · SPERANDEI · The medal probably dates from around 1476, the year in which Pietro Bono Avogario published the Bolognese edition of Ptolemy´s Cosmographia, in which for the first time a map of the terrestrial globe was redrawn using the prescriptions and learning of Ptolemy (see L. Sighinolfi, ´I mappamondi de Taddeo Crivelli e la stampa Bolognese della Cosmografia de Tolomeo´, La Bibliografia, X, 1908, p. 241). The medal does not refer to the musician and celebrated lutenist Pietro Bono Burzellis (1417-1479), known as PietroBono del Chitarino, who is listed as a chytaredo (a lute player) in the clerk´s pay books for the year 1449 at the court of Leonello d´Este at Ferrara, who was celebrated on a medal by Giovanni Boldù. References Armand I, 64, 3; Bargello I, 103; Hill 371 (c) for another example reading PETVS; Kress 119 Estimate £ 600-800

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£300