Da Raffaello a Vasari: note iconografiche sulla medaglistica pontificia nel Cinquecento

Abstract

The importance of the connection between the study of medals and the so considered ‘major arts’, such as painting and sculpture, has recently seen a marked increase in awareness. Nonetheless, a dichotomy still exists, since in the last century the art of medal making has mostly remained marginal within the critical debate and therefore the prerogative of a few specialists. Starting from this assumption, the article, resulting from a broader work of study and cataloging of the collection of gold and silver papal medals kept at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, focuses on a group of sixteenth-century specimens, bringing them into dialogue with the coeval art system. In this perspective, it considers their iconographic components in relation to the contemporary artistic production, also investigating the circulation of models and the direct exchange between artists, highlighting at the same time how medalists were never prone to a mere reiteration of given prototypes, but always bended them to their own, peculiar, needs.