CELLINI DIES FOR POPE CLEMENT VII MEDAL

Although I read every newsletter as released, I seldom find articles upon which to comment. The one on the Bargello is different in that I recently contacted them with an inquiry about certain Renaissance dies created by Benvenuto Cellini. I first emailed the Vatican collections to ask if the dies created by Cellini for medals honoring Pope Clement VII were in their collections. They promptly responded that the dies are held in the Bargello collections and upon an email to their curator photos were sent to me of the two main dies in question .. obverse and reverse of a medal commemorating the Treaty of Cambrai which ended the conflict between Spain and France fought in the Italian states.

My interest in these was due to a recent CNG Electronic auction containing a restrike example if the original medal using Cellini s original dies . Attached are images of the CNG example and of the two dies as well. Even greater was my delight to find how promptly my inquiries were answered by two such large institutions.

It is interesting to see the side and rear views of the two dies. The size difference suggesting the obverse die was placed in the press and the reverse die striking from above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I should mention that the close up of the reverse shows Cellini's signing of the die. The reverse shows a standing female personification of Peace and in front of the temple of Janus in the Roman Forum is a chained image of War or the god Mars himself.

A very precise description of the reverse of the medal is in the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. My copy is a translation by John Addington Symonds published in 1927. The passage is in the end of chapter LXX and the start of LXXI.......

"I went home and set myself to finishing the medal which I had begun, with the head of Pope Clement and a figure of Peace on the reverse. The figure was a slender woman, dressed in very thin drapery, gathered at the waist, with a little torch in her hand, which was burning a heap of arms bound together like a trophy. In the background I had shown part of a temple, where was Discord chained with a load of fetters. Round about it ran a legend in these words: Claudunter belli portae."

The phrase suggests the temple of Janus in the Forum whose doors on opposite ends were open whenever Rome was at war and only closed in times of peace (a rare occurrence in both Republic and Empire).

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF BARGELLO (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n27a14.html)

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