MEDAL

piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or plaquettes. Most medals are made of gold, silver, bronze, or lead, the precious metals being used for the finer productions. Medals are produced by a variety of techniques: they are cast from a model of wax, wood, or sometimes stone; they are struck from a die engraved in intaglio, the design impressed on the medal by pressure; or they can be produced by the repouss process, in which two separately worked, interlocking molds containing the blank are brought together under pressure. A positive punch, or hub, can be cut in hard metal and the design stamped into a softer metal, which is then hardened to form a die (thus many dies can be made from one hub). Machine cutters, introduced in the 19th century, copied mechanically an enlarged electrotype of the original design; but this technique, by eliminating hand cutting, took away much of the medalist's work. Although some Roman medallions of bronze and other metals are known, it is generally accepted that the art of the medalist began in 1438 with a bronze medal of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Paleologusthe first of a series of fine portrait medals. Italian medalists were responsible for a number of innovations, including the development by the Renaissance architect Donato Bramante of a press for leaden seals, which eliminated the damaging hammer blows otherwise needed to force the impression onto the medal. Some of the most beautiful 16th-century medals were made by Benvenuto Cellini. German medalists gained a justified reputation in the first half of the 16th century with the work of Peter Fltner and other artists of the Nrnberg school. In the 17th century, French medalists such as Guillaume Dupr, the Warin brothers, and Franois Briot, with his fine medal of King Louis XIII struck in 1610, brought the French school to prominence. In England during the 17th century, Thomas Rawlins and the brothers Simon produced medals of considerable quality; a fine example is a gold medal depicting General George Monck made in 1660 by Thomas Simon. Important medalists of the 18th and early 19th centuries include the Englishman John Croker and the Italian Benedetto Pistrucci. In general, however, this was a period of sterility in the medalist's art. In spite of the development of mechanical techniques, the 19th century saw a revival of the art with the work of Hubert Ponscarme and Jules-Clment Chaplain in France and the Wyon family in England. Medalists of the 20th century often returned to the older techniques of hand cutting and casting. piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or plaquettes. Most medals are made of gold, silver, bronze, or lead, the precious metals being used for the finer productions. Medals are produced by a variety of techniques: they are cast from a model of wax, wood, or sometimes stone; they are struck from a die engraved in intaglio, the design impressed on the metal by pressure; or they can be produced by the repouss process, in which two separately worked, interlocking molds containing the blank are brought together under pressure. A postitive punch, or hub, can be cut in hard metal and the design stamped into a softer metal, which is then hardened to form a die (thus many dies can be made from one hub). Machine cutters, introduced in the 19th century, copied mechanically an enlarged electrotype of the original design; but this technique, by eliminating hand cutting, took away much of the medalist's work. Additional reading General works on medals and medallic art include Jean Babelon, La Mdaille et les mdailleurs (1927); Max Bernhart, Medaillen und Plaketten, 3rd ed., edited by Tyll Kroha (1966); Sir George Hill, Medals of the Renaissance, rev. ed., edited by Graham Pollard (1978); Mark Jones, The Art of the Medal (1979); Graham Pollard and Giuseppe Mauri Mori, Medaglie e monete (1981); and L. Forrer (comp.), Biographical Dictionary of Medallists: Coin, Gem, and Seal-Engravers, Mint-Masters, &c., Ancient and Modern , 8 vol. (190230, reprinted 1970). For current sources of information, see Monete e Medaglie (bimonthly, Italy); and Muenzen und Medaillen-Monnaies et Medailles (monthly, Switzerland).