Unknown women memorialised: portrait medals in Renaissance Italy

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Portrait medals, highly fashionable from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, are one of the most overlooked art forms of the Italian Renaissance despite surviving in large quantities and possessing considerable potential for advancing our understanding of the culture, society and values of the period.16 / 34Within this already underexplored group of objects are a body of medals which have been almost entirely neglected - those of the local, middle-class women of Renaissance Italy. By placing these medals in an historical context, this research project will seek to understand their function and meaning in relation to gender, fame and individuality. It is anticipated that the research project will demonstrate that these portrait medals do not just depict idealised, beautiful women (belle donne), but actual individuals who were commemorated because of their own personal merit and virtue. These objects provide, then, a unique opportunity to illuminate those women who might otherwise have been lost to history and, with it, allow a more nuanced understanding of gender in numismatics, art history and museum collections alike. Women and gender has been my chosen line of academic enquiry since my MA (2016-2018). For an intercollegiate module at King's College London, I wrote an essay on the final chapter of Giovanni Boccaccio's 'On Famous Women', arguing that Boccaccio realised in Queen Johanna I of Naples the model of a virtuous ruler. My MA dissertation, 'Blurring Genders and Making Decisions: The Case of Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua', used gender as an analytical category to examine a series of choices made by Isabella, contextualising her ability to participate in leadership and governance against humanist texts in the vein of Boccaccio. My research was interdisciplinary, incorporating both written documentation and material culture - including portrait medals - into my argument. On my palaeographical and codicological skills, refer to section four. Having begun to explore the potential of portrait medals as important historical sources, I received a British Numismatic Society bursary to support a placement at The British Museum. Within the Department of Coins and Medals, I gained direct experience of handling medals, including those which my project is based upon, by imaging a large body of the museum's collection of Italian lead portrait medals. I also provided support for the department's exhibition 'Witnesses - émigré medallists in Britain', from design, preparation and implementation. My knowledge of Italian is nearing an intermediate level and I continue to have lessons on a weekly basis.