Cabinet of curiosities. Medici forever Automatic translate

The State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin presents an exhibition from the series “Cabinet of Curiosities”. As part of the new project, works of decorative and applied art from stock repositories are exhibited. The exhibition is dedicated to an important discovery by the staff of the museum’s numismatic department – ​​the attribution of a unique Italian seal of the 16th century. The objects presented in the exhibition come from the collection of the Pushkin Museum and almost all are exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition features coins and works of medal art from the 16th–18th centuries associated with the Medici dynasty, including a 1716 medal for the death of Count Palatine Johann Wilhelm II, recently acquired by the museum. According to the epitaph on the reverse side, the customer of this medal was the wife of the Count Palatine, Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici (1667–1743), daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III. Anna Maria bequeathed to Florence all the collections of works of art that belonged to her family, with the condition that they would never leave the city. The exhibition is complemented by a portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, by the workshop of Agnolo Bronzino. The central exhibit is a table seal with a figured handle, belonging to a representative of the Medici family.

At the dawn of the Renaissance, the Italian nobility ceased to be content with traditional heraldic symbols, which were not “individual” enough and did not reflect personal qualities, aspirations and merits. Special personal signs emerged, which were later called “imprese”. In the middle of the 15th century, Medici signs appeared: a diamond ring, two or three feathers and a ribbon with the motto SEMPER (Latin for “Always” or “Forever”). Over time, they fall out of the “personal” field and become signs of the family almost on a par with the coat of arms.

Experts were able to attribute the seal thanks to several significant elements. On the print matrix presented at the exhibition there is a remarkable image: three feathers, between which is a parcel with the SEMPER legend. At the bottom, the feathers are threaded into a horizontal ring or diadem. These symbolic elements are familiar to specialists involved in Italian personal emblems, and allow us to associate the seal with representatives of the House of Medici. This is also evidenced by other details of the seal, for example, a red ball at the top, called Palla dei Medici (Italian: “Medici Ball”).

During the life of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici (1416–1469), the sign with the ring, feathers and the motto SEMPER was associated primarily with himself, but was not considered his personal sign. Probably, it was originally conceived as a symbol of the head of the family and should have passed as such to Lorenzo (1449–1492), Pierrot’s heir. However, quite quickly this meaning was lost, and they began to believe that it was invented under Lorenzo and was even his personal sign, and then began to indicate belonging to the Medici family. This is precisely the attribution given by Paolo Giovio in the treatise “Dialogo dell’imprese militari e amorose” (1555): “The magnificent Lorenzo borrowed [the ring] with great grace, inserting three feathers of different colors inside; that is, green, white and red; wishing to convey that, loving God, he flourished in these three virtues, Fides, Spes, Charitas, designated by such colors; Faith - white, Hope - green, Love - flaming, that is, red; with the motto SEMPER below, which impreza has been continued by all the descendants of this house…”

The silver head that adorns the pommel of the seal does not itself have a deep symbolic meaning, but similar heads served as decoration for a number of Florentine coats of arms and especially the Medici coat of arms. The double (dotted and linear) rim is generally typical of Florentine seals of the 15th–17th centuries.

In Florentine sphragistics there are no direct analogies for such a seal and there are no copies where only the impreza would be represented on a single matrix. However, there are numerous examples of double seals. Their main matrix of a round or oval shape has an image of the coat of arms and an inscription with the name of the owner, and an additional matrix of a smaller size repeats the shape of the main matrix and has either a simpler image of the coat of arms, or a monogram, or (very rarely) another image, but is almost always devoid of an inscription.

Yulia Krasnobaeva, leading researcher at the numismatics department, curator of the exhibition: “We can make an assumption that initially the seal could have been made entirely of steel with two matrices. The main matrix could display the Medici coat of arms with a pommel in the form of a sign with three feathers and the motto SEMPER. This seal could date back to the first half - mid-16th century. Then, in the second half of the 16th century or even at the very beginning of the 17th century, the seal could be divided into two parts, and the counter-matrix became part of our seal. Such alteration could have taken place in one of the many antique workshops in Italy. However, this idea could also have originated in the Medici family - there is an example when the seal of Duke Alessandro Medici was remade for the Grand Duke Cosimo I.”