Posibles tipos de conmutación de protección

In addition to the example of coins, cameos, and Alberti’s plaquette, there is a further specific precedent for Pisanello’s ‘invention’ of the medal: the French medals of the Duke of Berry, and in particular the Constantine.

The Duke’s inventories list a number of medallic objects, but only two survive in a complete form, Constantine and Heraclius. These, as can be adduced from the inventory descriptions, are second-generation copies: the finest examples are made from silver repoussé and are unadorned whereas the originals were made from gold, and were encrusted with gems. These objects were made no later than 1402 at least forty years before the Palaeologus. They are mentioned by all of the main authors (inter alia T. Jones 2011:17-49; Scher 2000:4 ; Lavin 1993:68; M. Jones 1979a:9-11; Hill 1978:36; Weiss 1966:14), and are widely believed to have had a direct influence on Pisanello’s production of the Palaeologus medal.

There are a number of material similarities that make this view highly suggestive. At c.100 millimetres diameter, the size of the Palaeologus medal is similar to the Berry medals. Like the Heraclius medal, the obverse features a right facing portrait. In both pieces, the subject’s headgear pierces the border formed by the surrounding text. Like the Constantine medal, the reverse shows an equestrian figure facing to the right. All three objects depict Byzantine emperors, all of whom are associated with the Cross.

Of course, the most striking correspondence between these objects is the context of their production. Both the Berry and the Palaeologus medals were made during a Byzantine emperor’s visit to Europe. The Berry medals were made during the visit of Manuel II Palaeologus to Paris, where he stayed from 1400-1402 as a guest of the French King, the Duke of Berry’s nephew.

Pisanello’s medal was made on the occasion of the visit of Manuel II’s son, John VIII Palaeologus, to the ecumenical council of 1438 in Ferrara, to which Niccolò d’Este acted as host. Furthermore, as Pisanello had worked for the Este from

the late 1430s, it is extremely likely that he was aware of the copies of Heraclius in Niccolò d’Este’s collection, and although copies of Constantine are not

similarly inventoried, it is likely that he was familiar with this object as well (T. Jones 2011:87; Weiss 1966:14).

The epigraphic evidence is equally suggestive. Each medal carries an inscription that honours the Emperors depicted, in translation: Constantine, faithful in Christ our God, emperor and ruler of the Romans and forever Augustus; Heraclius, faithful in Christ our God, Emperor and Ruler of the Romans, victorious and triumphant, Augustus forever; John Palaeologus Autocrat and Emperor of the Romans. None of these are styled in the normal Western form of a Roman emperor at any time, either classical or medieval; but they do mirror the Greek formulae used by the Byzantine imperial chancery during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. From this it can be surmised that there was reasonable contact between the Byzantine retinue and the makers of these medals, both in the case of Manuel II’s visit to France, and his son’s visit to Italy (Weiss 1963:140).

A rather more speculative point of comparison between the Berry medal and Pisanello’s medal can be found in the possibility that the depictions of Constantine, and more probably Heraclius, are portraits of Manuel II (M. Jones 1979a:11 for Constantine; Barker 1969:401,531-532 for Heraclius). This would make the Berry medals portraits of the father and the Palaeologus a portrait of the son. This identification is not without its problems, especially with regards the Constantine, but is supported by the Berry medals’ departure from previous depictions of Heraclius and Constantine, and some similarity to Manuel II as his image has been handed down through other sources (Weiss 1963:40). Thus the strong coincidences of appearance, the application of near identical epigraphic formulae, the similar circumstances of production, the presence in Ferrara of a copy of the Heraclius medal, and the possibility that Pisanello may have

recognised this object as a portrait of a living emperor, all make it highly likely that the first cast medal was directly inspired by this older, French source.

While there is no controversy concerning the precedent of coins or of Alberti’s plaquette, the implications of the connection to the Berry medals for

the portrait medal’s subsequent development are subject to two divergent attitudes, and have never been adequately explored.

As will become clear below, numismatists tend to concentrate on those aspects of the medal that construct it as a defined corpus in the tradition of Pisanello. Thus, despite being responsible for one of the most important and perceptive studies on the Berry medallions, Mark Jones describes them in his

Catalogue of French Medals in the British Museum as a ‘false dawn… great but

isolated examples of the late medieval goldsmith’s art’, and ascribes them to a period of medallic production which is ‘little more than a reflection of alien cultural influence translated into concrete form by the application of skills developed for quite other purposes’ (1982:8). Although his comments are directed at a specifically French context, the language that he employs suggests an underlying bias; in terms that border on the pejorative, he objects to the open and synthetic nature of this period of medallic art. Likewise, in what remains the best introduction to the field of study, The Art of the Medal, the same author acknowledges the influence of the Berry medals on Pisanello’s

Palaeologus, but has nothing to say about how this French influence might

impinge on the message of the Italian objects that follow (1979a:12). By contrast, Irving Lavin’s short but important essay Pisanello and the

Invention of the Renaissance Medal (1993) draws attention to the coincidental

circumstances of Byzantine diplomacy that unite both examples, and seeks to read the medals in that light. Tanja Jones follows Lavin’s lead: her recent doctoral thesis is built on the premise that Pisanello’s adoption of the medal was not just inspired by the example of the Berry medallions and their Byzantine associations, but rather can be wholly explained by them, understanding of the latter requiring knowledge of the former (2011).

Whether Pisanello saw the medals of the Duke and had these in mind when the Palaeologus was made is not really the matter at hand. There is enough similarity between these two sets of objects to assume that there is a

connection of some kind between them – most likely a direct connection. One of the specific findings of this research, presented in chapter 5, is the

Emperor of Constantinople. This is new knowledge, but it does support the emergent view of Lavin and T. Jones that Pisanello’s adoption of the medal is specifically related to the cause of Eastern Christianity, and is associated with crusade.

It will be noted that approaches represented by M. Jones on the one hand, and T. Jones on the other construe the origins of the medal in divergent terms. Both authors see the French objects as important; but where one is anxious to assert the limits of the field and to define, the other seeks interpretation through a more open and relative approach, with less heed to categorical boundaries. This is more than a difference of opinion. It is a difference in the nature of their study. It is to this that we now turn.