Italian Renaissance Learning Resources

 A wide range of Renaissance people celebrated their learning using material derived from literary texts and visual sources, adapting it for personal use in ingenious ways. Alberti was not the only person to use the small but expressive medium of the medal to put forward a statement of personal identity. The important scholar and teacher Guarino Guarini (also known as Guarino da Verona), who operated private schools in Florence, Venice, Verona, and Ferrara that were attended by future princes, civil servants, and teachers, worked with Matteo de’ Pasti to prepare a medal of himself that extolled the nature of learning (see fig. 133). Guarino, renowned for his knowledge of Greek and Latin, translated many important texts in both languages and on occasion would give learned advice to patrons of artistic projects (see “Guarino da Verona gives instructions to Lionello d’Este on how to paint the muses”). In his portrait on the obverse of the medal, he wears the toga of ancient Rome, as if he were an antique hero. On the reverse is an allegory of learning that takes the form of what can be described as a “fountain of learning and virtue.” A goblet-like fountain rises from a grassy knoll, surmounted by a nude figure of Hercules, the archetypal figure from antiquity known for his strength and ingenuity. Hercules stands on a globe from which pour ample streams of water. The fountain is encircled by a rich laurel wreath, an allusion to the honorific crowns of laurel awarded to poets, orators, and emperors in ancient Rome.

 A number of women were honored with medals, many of which were ordered as part of the rituals of engagement and marriage. The medal of Giovanna degli Albizzi was commissioned about 1486, most likely by her husband-to-be, the well-connected and prosperous Lorenzo Tornabuoni, who was also a poet and literary scholar, to celebrate their forthcoming marriage. The portrait image on the obverse shows her wearing a necklace of pearls, the traditional adornment of brides. The image chosen for the reverse draws on the antique imagery of the Three Graces, interpreted here, as the inscription makes clear, in terms of the three key concepts attached to the Renaissance woman: CASTITAS, PVLCHRITVDO, and AMOR (Chastity, Beauty, and Love). The Three Graces are shown as three elegant nude women—types of the goddess Venus—entwined in a circular embrace that gives prominence to each.

In a few notable instances, women designed their own medals. An extraordinary example is the medal of Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua, whose projection of an image of learning stands out in the patronage picture of Renaissance Italy. We know from her correspondence that she put a great deal of time and energy into the medal that she commissioned in 1498. Her court artist, Giancristoforo Romano , himself a man of learning, prepared the wax model from which it was cast and almost certainly helped design it. On the front side Isabella is shown in the elegantly dressed hairdo favored in Italy in the 1480s, her portrait encircled by her name and title. The back side, merging material from popular astrology and antique coins, presents a winged figure—presumably another reference to Isabella—holding a wand; she tames the snake at her feet, while a centaur, sign of the planet Sagittarius, gallops overhead. The imagery was intended to be complex and erudite and was acknowledged as such by its recipients. As interpreted by modern scholars, it adds up to a celebration of Isabella as the darling of the gods, with a brilliant destiny dictated by the stars. The marchesa called on advisers to select a complementary and original motto for the reverse of the medal. The final choice, after much discussion, was BENEMERENTIUM ERGO (for those who are well deserving), an undisguised reference to the patron. Isabella kept a particularly sumptuous version of the medal, in gold and elaborately framed on the portrait side with the letters of her name spelled out in cut diamonds: ISABELA.