Three Ladies, Three Medals

Cecilia Gonzaga as Diana; Isabella d’Este as Nemesis; Elisabetta Gonzaga as Danaë. The “all’antica” medal inspired by Roman imperial coins is a Renaissance invention, a new genre that originates from Pisanello’s exquisite art, which focuses on the personal qualities and virtues of the individual represented, thereby enhancing them – on the obverse in form of portrait, on the reverse in allegorical guise. On Renaissance medals not only do we find faces and war ventures of Princes, Dukes, and leaders of the time. We also see – unexpectedly – portraits of brilliant, beautiful young women, educated in Classics, destined to become the protagonists of Italian courts in the fifteenth century.