Asiatic Coins

Portraiture.—The development of portraiture on coins, as seen in the second half of the 15th century, must be traced to the Italian medal (Pl. 2). Pisanello's first medal, ing the Emperor John NTH Palaeologus, was made in 1438 (Pl. VIII.-I). It revealed the possibilities of profile portraiture on a small scale, suitable for coinage. What the medallists showed was that modern portraits, and not mere imitations of the antique, could find a place on modern coinage. In the '6os and '7os engravers in Milan, Parma and Venice were producing both small medals and portrait-coins from dies. By the beginning of the i6th century the technical difficulties had been overcome (Pl. VIII.-3) ; and soon the facility afforded by striking for the mass production of medals began to have a reaction on the medallic art. The art of coinage had reached its culmination ; all future de velopments added nothing to its artistic content, and were due merely to increased technical dexterity.

But the medal had still a course to run. The best medallists continued throughout the i6th century to use the casting process for their most important work, even when they were also die engravers by profession. But official patronage favoured the struck medal, satisfied with number rather than quality. The technical dexterity of the modeller continued nevertheless to increase. In Germany especially, where the art of the medal culminated in the period from 1520 to 1540, a series of portraits was produced unsurpassed in the realism of their presentation and technique of casting (Pl. VIII.-2). In Italy after about 1530 the cast medal continued to develop as an art that had lost its in spiration; facile, graceful but superficial, the elegant portraits of Pastorino of Siena (Pl. VIII.-5) are typical of the school. The modeller begins to lose the sense of material; the original wax model is all that he cares about and the final product in metal is merely a means of perpetuating it. By the end of the 16th cen tury the Italian vein was worked out. Italian influence, however, had passed across the Alps. German lands, especially Austria, France and Flanders, had all felt it, though none of them in the i6th century produced medallists who marked an epoch. It remained for France in the first half of the 17th century to do for the art of the medal what Italy through Bernini did for sculpture. As masters of the baroque portrait Guillaume Dupre (Pl. Jean and Claude Warin should be mentioned beside Bernini, though they too had his excessive virtuosity, as well as his brilliance. In England Thomas and Abraham Simon (Pl.

VIII.-7) are almost on the same level. In Holland a native school is distinguished by hardy vigour. These developments are the last flowering of the medallic art before the dead period of the 18th century.

The 19th Century.

In the last quarter of the 19th century the monotonous academic tradition which had reigned for nearly two centuries began to break down. The French revival took its rise in Ponscarme (1827-1903). By the study of character in portraiture, the search for a dignified realism, and for a har monious relation of type to background, and by such external reforms as the abolition of the raised border which had so long been the fashion, he inaugurated a return to the true principles of the art (P1. IX.-I). The French school reached its zenith under Chaplain (1839-1909), but unfortunately, thanks to modern machinery, exploited with immense skill by Oscar Roly and his school (P1. IX.-4), the medal in French hands became a merely pretty art, lacking virility and sincerity. In Germany native vigour interposed, and the portraiture by such artists as the Viennese Anton Scharff (1845-1903) is of a fine seriousness. In England Alphonse Legros (1837-1911), with a true instinct re jecting the machine-made medal, produced a remarkable series of cast portraits (Pl. ; but he found no successor.

Later developments are not sufficiently important to require detailed mention. We are still in the age of experiment. The immense output of medals, especially in Germany, during the World War should have revealed original artists if there were any, but the only one to rise above a journalistic level was Ludwig Gies (Pl. IX.-3) and he often trespassed beyond the limits of his art. There is at the present moment no lack of fine and accom plished portraiture, and although for the purposes of mass pro duction the use of machinery is unavoidable, the better medallists, such as Theodore Spicer-Simpson, are content to produce their works by the nobler method of casting in limited editions of two or three specimens. (See METAL WORK ; SEALS ; GREEK ART ; ROMAN ART.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-On the technique of making coins and medals see G. F. Hill, "Ancient Methods of Coining," Numismatic Chronicle (1922) and Medals of the Renaissance (1920). On the place of coins in art, the literature is confined to ancient coins: B. V. Head, Guide to the Coins of the Ancients (4th ed., 1895) ; P. Gardner, Types of Greek Coins (1882) ; K. Regling, Die Antike Miinze als Kuntstwerk (1924); G. F. Hill, Select Greek Coins (1927). (G. F. H.)