The many and increasing duties of my own department at
the Museum, which had been considerably augmented by recent
additions, especially by the gift of the Christy Collection,
obliged me to lay aside the work for a time : but the Trustees
having decided that I should have the assistance of Mr. H. A.
Grueber, of the Department of Coins and Medals, the work has
been brought to a termination. Mr. Grueber has gone over
the whole of the work with me, and much additional information
respecting- the medals is due to the researches which he
has made. This is especially applicable to the portion of the
work subsequent to the reign of William III., which was in a
much less forward state, and in which many medals remained
to he identified and explained. Mr. Grueber has also written
the Introduction and has prepared the Indices.
B r it ish M useum ,
AUGUSTUS W. FRANKS.
INTKODU CTION.
“ Medals,” says Addison, “ give a great light to history in
confirming such passages as are true in old authors, in
settling such as are told after different manners, and in recording
such as have been omitted. In this case a cabinet
of medals is a body of history. In fact it was a kind of
printing before the art was introduced.” ' In writing these
lines Addison probably was referring more especially to
Roman coins, which are remarkable as chronological records.
The word “ medal” in his time had a more general meaning,
and included also coins. Its application was not
then confined, as it is now, to such metallic pieces as were
never intended for circulation, but only issued as memorials
or records of events. The Roman medallion, which resembled
in type the copper currency of that State, was the first distinct
series of this special class of objects. Between the issue of
these pieces, which extended from the first to the middle of
the fourth century, and the Italian medals which followed
them, there is an interval of ten centuries. The earliest
Italian medallists, moreover, worked on quite new lines, and
the medals of the Renaissance are in no way descendants
of the older medallion. The Romans struck their medals as
they did their coins, but the new artistic productions of the
fifteenth century were cast in moulds, and were larger in size,
bolder in design, and much higher in relief. The medallist
of those days had more in common with the sculptor than with
the engraver. The art thus introduced into Italy flourished
with great vigour, so that in a period of a little under a
hundred years, from about 1440 to 1530, the names of at least
fifty artists have come down to us, whose works are all remarkable
for their beauty of design and for their skilful execution.
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