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Auction: 8004 - An Important Collection of Renaissance Medals & Plaquettes
Lot: 135

Milanese School (mid 16th century) Cardinal Pietro Bembo, bronze medal, 56.5mm., a very fine cast, the obverse slightly rough but the reverse sharp, brown patina Obverse: bare-headed bust in profile to the right, with long beard, wearing mozzetta, PIETRO BEMBI CAR Reverse: the fountain of hippocrene gushing forth at the feet of Pegasus, no legend Cardinal Pietro Bembo (born 1470, Cardinal 1538, died 1547), born in Venice, a writer, poet, philologist, and a humanist, was papal secretary from 1513. The image of Pegasus and the spring was also his impressa. In his autobiography for 1537 Benvenuto Cellini records making a wax portrait of Bembo, and a reverse of Pegasus, in preparation for a struck medal. ´…la prima giornata io lavorai dua ore continue, e bozzai quella virtuosa testa di tanta buona grazia, che Sua Signoria ne restò istupefatta.´ (…the first day I worked non-stop for two hours and reproduced that virtuous head with such beautiful grace that his lordship was astonished). The portrait could not be the one seen here because Cellini noted Bembo ´portava la barba corta alla veniziana´ (had a short beard in the Venetian fashion). Armand and Plon argued that this medal is a later modification of the 1537 wax portrait. L. Rizzoli proposed that it is the work of Denese Cattaneo (´Una medaglia del Bembo che non è opera di Benvenuto Cellini´, in L´Arte, VIII, 1905, pp. 276-280). Habich, more circumspect, merely attributed the medal to the Milanese School. It was certainly made after 1538, the year Bembo became Cardinal. Gasparotto, and more recently Philip Attwood, have supported the attribution to Cattaneo. References Armand I, 146,1; Attwood 217; Bargello III, 818; Gaetani, I, LXIII, 8; Gasparotto 105-106; Habich p.121; Hill 1923, 97, fig. 42 (attributed to Cellini); Hill-Pollard p. 85, pl. 16, 1;.Humphris 34; Johnson-Martini 1994, pp. 1847-9; Kress 484b; Middeldorf 127 (as Milanese) Estimate £ 600-800

Sold for
£2,500