WHAT a marvelous field for enjoyment is opened to the collector by medallic art! To the uninitiated any coin or medal a hundred years old will seem instantly to suggest an almost prohibitive value. Nothing could be more of a mistake. As a matter of fact interesting coins and medals are within the reach of almost any one for a remarkably small outlay. Of course tremendous prices are given for tremendous rarities, but coin-and medal-collectors in America seem more interested in early coined United States cents which exhibit this slight variation or that, than in collecting for purely the beauty and the historic charm medallic art exhibits.

Perhaps I should not quarrel with such, for this state of affairs has, in times past, permitted my acquiring for pennies lovely medals and marvelously beautiful coins, while they were paying out, in the same sales, small fortunes for ugly broken-down coppers whose sole virtue (in my sight) lay in their containing half their face-value of pure copper!

But we need not linger over these. Let us take thought of the real masterpieces of the times that were and the times that are. We must include the remarkable productions of our contemporary medalists, inheritors of the skill and best traditions of past masters.

In the first place, medallic art, more than any other, perhaps, nearly always displays prominent national characteristics; so it is comparatively easy to distinguish between the medals of various countries.

The debt history owes to coins and medals, for the clues to the past they have given it, is enormous. Cities and sites have been identified by their means, dates of dynasties made certain by their evidence, and forgotten deeds of heroes recalled through their records. A few years ago a Sicilian peasant is said to have discovered the only specimen extant of a rare coin of antiquity that adds certainty to our knowledge of the site of AbacÆnum, whose ruins lie outside the walls of Tripi.

As Vasari observed, the art of the medalist is “a work most difficult by artists as it holds the mean between painting and sculpture.” That it does, truly, as any collection of early medals and the best medals of to-day conclusively proves. At the end of the fifteenth century the making of dies as it was then practised permitted only designs for very low relief to be struck and of small circumference—such a size as we see in the coins of that time. Coins like the United States double eagle designed by Saint-Gaudens could not then have been attempted. Stamping from the die was a process yet in its infancy and was not then able to meet the requirements of striking the larger medal forms; hence these were invariably cast. First a model in wax was made and embedded in some fine molding-substance, such as earth or charcoal. Having fitted itself perfectly into every crevice of the wax model, this mold of earth was stiffened by a lye solution; the wax was melted out, and molten metal was poured from a crucible into the mold which was left behind. Whether or not replicas were made from the same mold is a question that remains unsolved. Probably not, but instead they may have been made from the new molds of new wax models formed in plaster molds from plaster casts of the originals. When removed from its mold the medal was worked over with a fine gritty substance, and often with finishing instruments. Moreover, the edges had to be filed smooth, as the casting always left them rough. In many cases it is apparent that engraving was resorted to in order that outlines might be emphasized, especially in indicating hair.

In very early days medals afforded a convenient kind of portrait for transmission to distant friends; large numbers of medals, too, were buried under the foundations of buildings erected by a prince or a state, as in our own time coins are placed under the corner-stone of a public edifice. For instance, in the cellar walls of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome, built by Pope Paul II, twenty medals of that pope were found. Some bore on the reverse a representation of the palace, others the arms of the pope with the legend: “Has Ædes Condidit.” They were enclosed in an earthenware case that had to be broken in order to release the contents. It is safe to assume that nearly all early medals bearing representations of buildings were cast for like commemorative purposes.

It remained for the beginning of the sixteenth century to witness the inauguration of the art of striking medals from engraved dies. In the British Museum there is an example of a medal of Pope Julius II by Francesco Francia the painter, who besides being a painter and a medalist was also a goldsmith and likewise designed the font of italic type for Aldus Manutius the printer. This medal of Pope Julius was probably struck about the year 1506. It and the medals of Benvenuto Cellini in the Museo Nazionali in Florence (which latter medals are perhaps the finest examples of struck medals of the period, though by no means the most artistic) occasionally turn up in public sales. They, of course, command top-notch prices, although a truly fine gold coin from Cellini’s dies, a coin of undoubted authenticity, was purchased in London by the author for two pounds, and from a dealer of international reputation.

When Francia and Cellini were engraving their dies the new method was still confined to medals of smaller circumference, for all the larger ones as yet continued to be cast, even down to the end of the sixteenth century; and of course casting is a method in very general use to-day. The modern process of reducing models by means of a clever mechanical instrument enables the medalist to work out the relief without size restrictions, from which the reduced size desired for the medal is finally obtained with absolute fidelity. In fact, modern medals are often produced in various sizes by an ingenious mechanical process, without any loss in effect from the same original. Roty’s medal for the French Alpine Club is such an example.

One may see that the change from casting to striking medals greatly affected the art of the medalist. The preparation of the model for casting required a technique almost identical with that of the sculptor preparing for a bronze statue, the sculptor in marble of course having to take into account further matters incident to the substance he was finally to work in. On the other hand, the die-engraver’s art required a totally different technique, a skill akin to the requirements of gem-engraving and also to the craft of a goldsmith. When cast medals became reduced to the size of struck medals, the reduction required finer workmanship in the original modeling and in the finishing. This again brought the medalist nearer the goldsmith. Accordingly, we find Francia, Cellini, Valerio Belli, Cesati, Annibale Fontana, Leone Leoni, and others at once goldsmiths or gem-engravers and medalists.

It is interesting to visit some museum collection and compare a cast medal by Pisano with a struck medal by Cellini, or with one by Bernardi, in order to note their differences. Very often the extreme fineness in finish of early Italian medals makes them appear at first sight struck when in reality they have been cast. This is especially noticeable in the medals of Pastorino of Siena, who very nearly brought medallic portraiture to its perfection. His manner is full of delicacy and beauty, but it just misses the mark in requisite vigor.

There are various medals intimately connected with American history, though many of them have been executed by alien artists. However, with the example set by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Frederick Mac Monnies, Victor D. Brenner, Paul Manship, James Earle Fraser, John Flanagan, and others, it is to be hoped that more of our artists will turn to this field and that more encouragement, public and private, will be given in it. We might well emulate the attention that has been given to the subject in France.

Fine medals and coins should be tenderly treated. Every scratch mars their beauty. Each should be kept protected from abrasion. It is vandalism to subject a medal or coin to an unskilled scouring or scraping. The early Italians were greatly interested in medallic art and appreciated beautiful medals as perhaps no other people has ever done. There are, of course, those soulless persons who find in a medal or an uncurrent coin only a suggestion of something that might once have been spent but which cannot be now, and who, with a shrug, refuse to share the enthusiast’s pleasure. The collector must not hope to win such to the interest with which medallic art is invested.