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Metal Gallery.:

Portraits and achievements from the Este medal collection

From 14 December to 31 March 2019

Estense Gallery

Largo Porta Sant'Agostino, 337, Modena

Closed now: open at 08:30

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Curated by Federico Fischetti and Giulia Zaccariotto: a careful selection of medals and coins belonging to the Estense Collection and related works such as drawings, cabinets, catalogs of casts, dies, and punches. This exhibition is the result of a meticulous operation of reorganization, cataloging, restoration, and digitization of the collection of 2400 medals and plaques of the Gallery, lasting two years and conducted in collaboration with the Memofonte Foundation of Florence. Ancient coins and gems, collected since the Middle Ages, played a fundamental role throughout the Renaissance: that of direct testimonies of a glorious past. These small objects soon became an indispensable accompaniment to the collections of scholars and nobles of the courts, among whom Leonello d'Este, an attentive collector of numismatic antiquities. It is precisely in the Estense court, just before the mid-fifteenth century, that the new genre of the medal was born: an art object that recalled ancient coins but depicted, fixing them in metal for eternity, the Renaissance princes. Established artists such as Pisanello or Sperandio, as well as lesser-known goldsmiths and jewelers such as Amadio da Milano and Petrecino da Firenze, were the creators of medals for the Estensi, of which the Gallery preserves several examples of the highest quality. The masterpieces for the Marquises Niccolò III, Leonello, and for the Dukes Borso and Sigismondo, initiated a familiar metallic history destined to perpetuate itself in the centuries to come. The Estense passion for numismatic collections led the court to possess, in the late sixteenth century, one of the richest collections existing, and it was then that the practice of marking ancient coins with a punch bearing a heraldic eagle, the emblem of the House of Este, began: a unique case in the history of numismatics. The Galleria Estense still preserves about three hundred specimens of this original nucleus. The exhibited medals will be investigated, in some cases, in their iconographic aspects: such as the symbolism of animals, which populate many reverses of refined objects from the Quattro and Cinquecento, or the female allegories, carriers of meanings and references to classical mythology, or the triumphal chariots, an absolute symbol of power and magnificence. Other objects will be used to explain the transition from the medal to the bust in Mannerist portraiture, or to tell the long history of the popes, or even the methods of technical realization of the medals. Galleria Metallica is therefore a "precious" opportunity to delve into the history of an object so small but so rich in value as the medal, following its development from the Renaissance masterpieces of Pisanello to the virtuosities of the Baroque and Neoclassical ages.

	opens - closes	last entry
monday	24:00 - 24:00
tuesday	08:30 - 19:30
wednesday	08:30 - 19:30
thursday	08:30 - 19:30
friday	08:30 - 19:30
saturday	08:30 - 19:30
sunday	14:00 - 19:30

Metal Gallery.:

Portraits and achievements from the Este medal collection

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