Speculum Principis. Notes on Two Plaquettes by Filarete

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Speculum principis

Notes on two plaquettes by Filarete Stefano G. Casu

‘medailleur aux empereurs romains’ (Medallist of the Roman Emperors) is the name given in 1883 by Alfred Armand to the artist who made three medals of Nero (fig. 1), Trajan and Faustina.1 This series was subsequently enlarged by George Hill, who added medals representing Julius Caesar (see p. 30, fig. 2), Hadrian and Marcus Croto2. Then, in 1973, Charles Seymour identified this anonymous master with the Florentine artist Antonio Averlino called Filarete (c.1400-69), an attribution that has been accepted by most scholars.3 Imperial portraits were not a common subject among fifteenth-century medals, and they seem to reflect Filarete’s idea of this artistic genre, as it emerges from a passage in the twenty-fourth book of his Treatise on architecture:

Nevertheless, they engraved in them heads of emperors and of women, as, for example, Diva Faustina, which was a noble thing.5

Petrarch’s gesture implied a didactic function of the image. The use of portraits as incitamenta animi has its classical source in Seneca’s, Ad Lucilium: ‘Our predecessors ... deserve respect, however, and should be worshipped with a divine ritual. Why should I not keep statues of great men to kindle my enthusiasm [incitamenta animi] and celebrate their birthdays?’8 Petrarch’s presentation of a collection of Roman coins to Charles IV was a way of using the images of the emperors as illustrations for the poet’s De viris illustribus, an idea that is also found, translated on a monumental scale, in the Sala dei Giganti in Padua9. The frescoes in this room were glossed by the tituli placed under images and they were meant to be viewed in conjunction with the Compendium, a sort of abridged version of the De viris illustribus probably prepared for that purpose and left unfinished by Petrarch.10 The Compendium was later completed by Lombardo della Seta, who, in the preface to his edition of the De viris illustribus, dedicated to Francesco I da Carrara, wrote:

As stressed by Robert Glass,6 these medals have a clear political, as well as an educational, function: they should be understood as exemplars of virtue (exempla virtutis) to be presented to a ruler. This is the same use that Petrarch made of ancient coins in his meeting with Charles IV in 1354. This episode is described in the Rerum familiarium libri:

As a host who greatly love virtues, you not only acknowledged those [heroes] with your mind and spirit, but you put them in the most beautiful part of your palace in a magnificent way, and, according to the custom of the ancients, the glorious conception of your great spirit hospitably made them honoured with gold and purple and with images and inscriptions so that they could be admired.11

The ancients were so perfect at this that it was a marvellous thing, for in one day they engraved in steel heads of men that seemed completely alive. To prove that this is so every day we recognise by means of this skill Caesar, Octavian, Vespasian, Tiberius, Hadrian, Trajan, Domitian, Nero, Antoninus Pius and all the others. 4

Nearly all of the people represented in the series are named in the Treatise, including Faustina, wife of Antoninus Pius, who is cited some lines below, in the same page of the book:

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I gave him as a gift some gold and silver coins bearing the portraits of our ancient rulers and inscription in tiny and ancient lettering, coins that I treasured, and among them was the head of August Caesar, who almost appeared to be breathing. ‘Here’, I said, ‘O Caesar, are the men whom you have succeeded, here are those whom you must try to imitate and admire, whose ways and character you should emulate: I would have given these coins to no other save yourself.7

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1. Filarete: Nero / Death of Seneca, 1440s(?), bronze, 114mm., National Gallery, Washington.

Lombardo in this passage creates a direct connection between Petrarch’s text and the cycle of frescoes. The importance given to ‘images and inscriptions’, presented as an ideal and classical tribute to exemplars of virtue, is crucial for the understanding of the role played by series of portraits of famous men in Renaissance art. The Petrarchan use of ancient coins continued on into the fifteenth century in a cultural context quite close to Filarete. In 1432 Ciriaco

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d’Ancona, meeting Sigismund of Luxemburg in Siena, presented him with a gold coin bearing the image of Trajan, ‘a good emperor worthy to be imitated’, repeating Petrarch’s gesture.12 The function of Filarete’s ‘imperial’ medals can be easily read within this tradition. However, two objects which were later derived from these medals are more problematic and warrant closer examination. The portrait on the obverse of Filarete’s Julius Caesar medal was transformed into a

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2. Filarete: Julius Caesar, 1440s, speculum metal, 169.5 x 117.5mm., Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

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plaquette, today in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence (fig. 2).13 The bust of Caesar was recast in a rectangular shape, the inscription ivlivs caesar was moved to the upper part of the plaquette, and a moulded frame with a loop was added; the reverse of the plaquette is plain.14 What is peculiar about this object is that it is made in speculum metal.15 Speculum alloy is quite brittle and is not a good choice for a medal or a plaquette, unless the object is intended to be used as a mirror. Indeed, the Bargello plaquette has a huge crack in the middle, and seems to be unfinished, since the loop has not been drilled. The object was probably produced in Filarete’s workshop from an early cast of the medal, and the quality of the working of the surface suggests his direct involvement in its production.16

Mirror-medals (or mirror-plaquettes) are actually rare, but there are at least two other later cases that seem to be comparable to this work by Filarete. One is a plaquette in speculum metal by Sperandio de’ Savelli (c.1431-1504), representing Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, part of the Fortnum collection now in the Ashmolean Museum.17 The other is a medal by Lysippus the Younger (active c.1471-84) in the British Museum, with the head of a young man on the obverse and a plain reverse.18 Here the function of the object is not implied by the material used, but is stated unequivocally by its inscription: la il bel viso e qvi il tvo servo mira (Look there at your beautiful face, and here at your servant). The lover of the young man should look at her own face on the reverse of the medal and then at the face of her ‘servant’ on the

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other side. Also in this case we are confronted with a Petrarchan use of a medal, but now in the service of love rather than politics. A quite similar idea is expressed by Petrarch in a sonnet, ‘Il mio adversario in cui veder solete’.19 In this poem the beloved looks at her face in a mirror, like Narcissus, and refuses the poet’s love. If only he could have been present, the mirror would not have made the woman so harsh and proud. In the work of Lysippus the medal itself is the mirror, but one which also retains the presence of the lover through his portrait.20 Transforming the plaquette into a mirror, which allows the beholder, by turning it, to compare his own face with that of Julius Caesar, introduces a new and interesting element into the tradition of the use of portraits as exempla virtutis. The object serves, literally, as a speculum

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principis, a mirror of the prince. This is the name traditionally given to treatises concerned with the education of a ruler or the child of a ruler. It is a genre that had a wide diffusion in the Middle Ages and a renewed fortune in the Renaissance period.21 The model text that gave the genre its name was Seneca’s De Clementia, which begins: ‘I have determined to write a book upon clemency, Nero Caesar, in order that I may as it were serve as a mirror to you, and let you see yourself arriving at the greatest of all pleasures.’22 At the very beginning of the fifteenth century the connection between the education of a prince and the use of mirrors was made in one of the most influential texts of this kind, the first Renaissance pedagogical treatise: Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder’s De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis. This treatise, written

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3. Filarete: Death of Seneca, 1440s, bronze, 130mm., Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

around 1400-02, when Vergerio had returned to Padua after having spent several years in Florence studying Greek with Manuel Chrysoloras, was dedicated to Ubertino da Carrara, son and heir apparent of Francesco Novello, last lord of Padua. The relevant passage is the following: In this connection Socrates used to give good advice, that young men should often look at their own image in a mirror. His reasoning evidently was that those who had a fine appearance would not dishonour it with vices, while those whose appearance was more irregular would take care to make themselves attractive through their virtues. But perhaps they will have better success if they will contemplate not their own image, but the behaviour of someone else of high character, a

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living mirror. For if Publius Scipio and Quintus Fabius used to say that they were deeply inspired by gazing upon the images of famous men – an experience common to nearly all noble minds – if Julius Caesar was spurred on to supreme power after seeing the image of Alexander the Great, what, in all reason, is bound to occur when someone can gaze on a living effigy and an example that is still breathing? True, the images of our ancestors perhaps inspire us to rival them in glory still more, since the actual presence of a person generally diminishes his glory and the living are usually beset with envy.23

Vergerio deals with the question of different kinds of images as incitamenta animi: the reflection of the mirror, portraits, and living

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people. His main source is clearly Petrarch. The examples of Quintus Fabius Maximus, Scipio and Caesar, all derived from Sallust, are cited in a letter Petrarch addressed to Giovanni Colonna.24 This provides a sort of ideological basis for the development of the humanistic use of history as a pedagogical and political tool. It is important, in order to understand the influence of this Paduan tradition on the development of Renaissance art, to stress how, as in the case of Vergerio, the exempla virtutis named in a text require a visual counterpart: if the heroes of Petrarch’s De viris illustribus were represented in the frescoes in the Sala dei Giganti, the members of the Carrara family were portrayed, in classical profile, in the illuminated manuscript of Vergerio’s De principibus Carrarensibus et gestis eorum liber, dedicated to Francesco Novello:25 they are literally the imagines majorum referred to in the passage of the De ingenuis moribus quoted above. It is no coincidence that it was Francesco Novello who in 1390 commissioned the first Italian medals, created to celebrate the reconquest of the city.26 What is more interesting is that the De ingenuis moribus appears to be the one and only early Renaissance text to deal with the didactic use of mirrors, with the reference to Socrates taken from the writings of Diogenes Laertius,27 and to connect this with the use of portraits as exemplars of virtue. The text gives, so to speak, a theoretical frame for the creation of an object such as the Bargello mirror-plaquette of Julius Caesar. Even though it is not sure that either Filarete or the commissioner of the object knew Vergerio’s text, its influence – albeit indirect – cannot be denied. An earlier example of a possible impact of Vergerio’s passage about mirrors on a work of art may be identified in the frescoes painted by Taddeo di Bartolo for the antechapel of the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena between 1413 and 1414.28 This cycle, representing heroes of Republican Rome, follows a programme written by Cristoforo d’Andrea and Pietro de’ Pecci. But, as Nicolai Rubinstein proposed,29 in one of the rare moments when Florence and Siena were political allies it is quite possible that Pietro de’ Pecci was advised by Leonardo Bruni, a close friend and correspond-

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ent of Vergerio, who was familiar with the text of the De ingenuis moribus.30 The inscription that accompanies the Sienese frescoes explains the reason for representing the images of ancient heroes: ‘Spechiatevi in costoro voi che reggete’ (Mirror yourself in these, you who rule!)31 The other medal by Filarete that seems to have been re-cast as a mirror is the one representing Nero. In this case, however, the image used is not the head of the emperor, but the representation of the Death of Seneca, which originally served as the reverse of the medal. The plaquette (fig. 3), today in the collection of the Staatliche Museen of Berlin, is circular, with a moulded frame, with a loop in the upper part, and a plain reverse.32 Like the Bargello plaquette, this object appears to be derived from an early casting of the medal, and the accurate working of decorative elements, quite close to the specimen now part of the Kress collection in the National Gallery of Art, Washington,33 suggests that it was produced in Filarete’s workshop.34 The subject of the Death of Seneca, implying a vision of the Roman philosopher as a sort of Christian martyr in a tradition that descends from Tertullian through Boccaccio, was assessed by John Cunnally in 1986.35 What should be understood is the reasoning that led to this image being chosen to create a mirror. The quoted passage from the De ingenuis moribus only partially explains the function of this object. The explanation can again be found in the didactic function of medals. In the De Clementia Seneca states that he himself is the mirror of the prince: ‘ut speculi fungerer’ (that I may serve as a mirror). Mirrors and portraits work as educational tools only because of the presence of the scholar that presents them. The important role of the educator is stressed by Petrarch. At the end of his description of his meeting with Charles IV, he compares himself with Plato, the most prestigious model for a scholar and educator, and draws an analogy between his relationship with the emperor and that of the Greek philosopher with Dionysius of Syracuse.36 The central role of the scholar explains also the presence of the portrait of Petrarch himself in the frescoes of Padua: he is the only modern exemplar in

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a series of classical heroes, but he is also the teacher who gives voice to the exempla virtutis of the past.37 But clearly there is another side to this coin: the educator can fail, as Plato failed with Dionysius. As Albert Russell Ascoli stressed, ‘this passage ... puts [Petrarch] on the same level as Plato ... At the same time, however, it also puts Charles in a position analogous to that of Dionysius of Syracuse, the example par excellence of the lawless and violent tyrant.’38 Petrarch was in fact disappointed by Charles, as the poet said in his address to the emperor: My Lelius brought me your words of greeting, which were for me a double-edged sword producing a fatal wound, together with the figure of Caesar, a very old work that would cause you, if it could speak or be seen by you, to desist from this inglorious, indeed infamous journey. Farewell, O Caesar, and consider what you are leaving behind and where you are headed.39

Interestingly enough, here the statue of Caesar would remain mute if Petrarch did not explain it to the emperor. But the most easily recognisable and powerful symbol of the failure of the educator of a prince is that of Seneca dying in front of Nero. If the mirror-plaquette in Florence is a mirror of the prince, the mirror-plaquette in Berlin is a mirror for his teacher. Was Seneca to blame for Nero’s crimes? This is a question with which humanists were concerned and a topic that was discussed in texts concerning the education of princes. Vergerio, for example, indirectly (without naming Seneca) examines the problem, writing: ‘It is true that the discipline of letters does not take away madness or wickedness. … Nero was particularly well educated … [but] was steeped in cruelty and all the vices.’40 In a more explicit way the question was posed by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-64), the future Pope Pius II, in his De liberorum educatione written in 1450 and dedicated to King Ladislaus of Bohemia, the posthumous son of Emperor Albert II.41 In an important passage at the beginning of the treatise Piccolomini states:

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[Teachers] ought to remember what Plutarch writes to the emperor Trajan, stating publicly that faults of pupils redound upon their teachers, and indeed there were a good number of people who ascribed to Seneca the depraved character of Nero. When Socrates had seen a boy of good natural disposition who was ignorant, he is said to have struck his tutor. 42

Piccolomini here seems to develop, in an overt way, ideas that implicit in Petrarch and Vergerio concerning both the responsibility of teachers and the risks implied in the education of princes. It is interesting that the only other case known to the present author of a Renaissance attempt to create a material ‘mirror of the prince’ was commissioned by Johannes Hinderbach, prince-bishop of Trent, a man closely linked to Enea Silvio Piccolomini and who shared the same kind of humanistic culture.43 Hinderbach’s name is connected with the well-known episode of Simonino of Trent in 1475, one of the most infamous cases of anti-Semitism of the fifteenth century. A boy, Simonino, disappeared and was later found dead, and the Jewish community of Trent was accused of ritual murder during a trial that had a large resonance all over Europe.44 However, Hinderbach was also a sophisticated and cultured humanist, a book collector and a patron of the arts. Born in 1418, he had studied in Vienna until 1437, and then moved to the University of Padua, where in 1452 he received his doctorate in canon law in the presence of Emperor Frederick III, who was on his way to Rome for the imperial coronation. In 1448 he had been named Frederick’s secretarius electus, 45 and in the following years served as chancellor and advisor to the emperor and his wife, Eleanor of Portugal. In the same period he developed a close friendship with Piccolomini, who referred to him as ‘amicus singularis et optimus’(a singular and best friend).46 In 1459 Hinderbach pronounced the official oratio in front of Piccolomini, now Pius II, as the representative of the emperor, and in 1465 he was chosen as prince-bishop of Trent, assuming the office in 1468.

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4. The ‘Venetian loggia’, Castelvecchio, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent. 5. Feliciano: Stone mirror, 1475, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trent.

Hinderbach shared many common cultural interests with Piccolomini. His large library, one of the best of his time, contained copies of the principal classical writers, including translations from Greek by Bruni, Traversari and Filelfo. He also acquired humanistic works, such as Leon Battista Alberti’s De pictura, Biondo Flavio’s Roma instaurata and Roma triumphans, demonstrating a remarkable taste for artistic questions and antiquarian studies.47 Hinderbach also evinced a specific interest in pedagogy, owning a copy of Pseudo-Plutarch’s De liberis educandis in the translation by Guarino Veronese48 and one of the De liberorum educatione of Piccolomini.49 He not only studied and thoroughly annotated both works but also presented a copy of Piccolomini’s treatise to Eleanor of Portugal in 1466 for her young son Maximilian.50 He also played a role in the education of the young prince.51 In 1468 the bishop moved to the castle of Buonconsiglio in Trent, and almost immediately started its restoration, introducing, for the first time in Trent, Renaissance ideas in the

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field of architecture.52 Hinderbach lived in the Castelvecchio, the oldest part of the building, and here, within the so-called ‘Venetian Loggia’ and next to the entrance to his own apartments, he installed a very strange object (fig. 4). Within a decorated frame of pink ammonite limestone, a convex disc of black stone is surrounded by an inscription engraved on a circle of white marble. The inscription, given in Latin and Greek, reads γνωθι. σαvτον. id est. cognosce. te. ipsvm. (Know thyself. That is, Know thyself) (fig. 5). It is a mirror made of touchstone, a material known in Italian as pietra di paragone (comparison stone). To each side of this object are marks left by four hinges, suggesting that the object was usually kept hidden behind two shutters and was shown only to selected friends. The mirror, which was traditionally connected with the works made in the castle for Bernardo Cles (prince-bishop between 1514 and 1539),53 was recognised by Giovanni Dellantonio as a work datable to the second half of the fifteenth century, commissioned by Hinderbach, and Stefano Zamponi has correctly attributed the

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inscription to Felice Feliciano.54 The shapes of both Greek and Latin letters correspond to the alphabets used by Feliciano and are identical to the dedicatory epigraph the Veronese scholar wrote in 1475 for the new wing of the castle.55 It is known that Feliciano met Hinderbach for the first time in 1474 and was in Trent around 1475. When offering his services to the princebishop, he proclaimed himself ‘humilis servitor Felicianus’ (your humble sevant Felicano)56 and presented him with several ancient and contemporary texts.57 The invention of this unusual object can also be connected to Vergerio’s De ingenuis moribus, with its references to the didactic use of mirrors, and in this case it is certain that Hinderbach knew the treatise, since he had a copy of the text in his library.58 The stone mirror is another material speculum principis, implying that the prince (or prince-bishop in this case) should look at his own face before entering his apartments, the purpose here being self-knowledge.59 The Delphic wording of the inscription is clearly a Socratic reference, consistent with what is said in Vergerio’s treatise, but with a direct reference to the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades, 60 where the mirror is presented in the context of the discussion between Socrates and Alcibiades about the meaning of ‘Know thyself’.61 It is clear that Hinderbach was fascinated by this maxim, and he noted it more than once in the margin of his books, both in Latin and in Greek.62 As with Vergerio, however, looking at one’s own face was not enough, one also had to compare it with exempla, particularly those of predecessors. The use of pietra di paragone is highly symbolic. On one hand, it is the stone that was used to test gold, so figuratively it could serve to assess the virtue of a person. On the other hand, it also entails a comparison. This explains the subject of the painted decoration of the loggia in which the mirror is located. Here Bartolomeo Sacchetti represented a series of the prince-bishops of Trent, along with the emperors who gave them their power over the principality of Trent.63 This cycle of frescoes, like the image of Caesar in Filarete’s plaquette, represented an ideal incitamentum animi for the beholder: Hinderbach’s predecessors were, to use the language of

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Petrarch, ‘the men whom you have succeeded, … whom you must try to imitate and admire’. The creation of the stone mirror by Feliciano is rooted in the same cultural tradition as Filarete’s mirror-plaquettes. In both cases the objects should be seen as didactic tools, inviting the viewer to compare the reflected appearance with the images of historical and prestigious models. Hinderbach, prince-bishop and educator of the son of the emperor, embodies the ideal beholder and patron of a work of art of this kind.

acknowledgments I am grateful to Arne Flaten, Charles Rosenberg and John Cunnally for their help in reviewing this article and for their precious advice.

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notes 1 Alfred Armand, Les médailleurs italiens des Quinzième et Seizième siècles, 2nd edition, i (Paris, 1883), p. 100, nos 1-3. 2 George Francis Hill, A corpus of Italian medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, 2 vols (London, 1930), nos 731-6. Hill dated the series in the last quarter of the fifteenth century and located the artist in the neighbourhood of Milan. 3 For a discussion of the identification of Filarete as the author of ‘imperial’ medals, see Robert Glass, ‘Filarete and the invention of the Renaissance medal’, in this issue of The Medal. 4 Filarete, Trattato di architettura, edited by Anna Maria Finoli and Liliana Grassi, ii, book XXIV (Milano, 1972), p. 679: ‘E quegli antichi l’avevano in tanta perfezzione che era cosa amiranda che in uno dì in quello acciaio intagliavano teste d’uomini che parevano proprio vive, e che sia tutto vero si vede, ché mediante questo esercizio noi conosciamo Cesare, Ottaviano, Vespasiano, Tiberio, Adriano, Traiano, Domiziano, Nerone, Antonino Pio e tutti gli altri che si truovano.’ The English translation is from Filarete’s Treatise on architecture. Being the Treatise by Antonio di Piero Averlino, known as Filarete, translated with an introduction and notes by John R. Spencer, i, The translation (New Haven and London, 1965), p. 316. 5 Filarete, Trattato, p. 679: ‘E niente di meno c’intagliavano dentro teste d’imperadori e di teste di donne, quella di Faustina diva, ch’era una degna cosa’. Translation from Filarete’s Treatise, p. 316. 6 Robert Glass, ‘Filarete at the papal court: sculpture, ceremony, and the antique in early Renaissance Rome’, PhD diss., Princeton University, 2011, pp. 313-20, 339-45. A similar point of view is advanced in a paper concerning the plaquette

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of Julius Caesar now in the Bargello (for which see n. 13 below) that the present author submitted as a graduate student at the University of Florence in 2001 (Scuola di Specializzazione in Storia dell’arte, history of the minor arts course). 7 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, XIX, 3: ‘Aliquot sibi aureas argenteasque nostrorum principum effigies minutissimis ac veteribus literis inscriptas, quas in delitiis habebam, dono dedi in quibus et Augusti Cesaris vultus erat pene spirans. “Et ecce” inquam, “Cesar, quibus successisti; ecce quos imitari studeas et mirari, ad quorum formulam et imaginem te componas, quos preter te unum nulli hominum daturus eram.”’ Translation from Francesco Petrarca, Letters on familiar matters. Rerum familiarium libri XVII-XXIV, translated by Aldo S. Bernardo (Baltimore and London, 1985), p. 79. 8 Seneca, Ad Lucilium, LXIV: ‘Multum egerunt qui ante nos fuerunt, sed non peregerunt. Suspiciendi tamen sunt et ritu deorum colendi. Quidni ego magnorum virorum et imagines habeam incitamenta animi et natales celebrem?’ 9 Theodor E. Mommsen, ‘Petrarch and the decoration of the Sala virorum illustrium in Padua’, Art Bulletin, xxxiv (1952), pp. 95-116. 10 On this cycle of frescoes and its connection with the Compendium of the De viris illustribus, see also Maria Monica Donato, ‘Gli eroi romani tra storia ed “exemplum”. I primi cicli umanistici di Uomini Famosi’, in Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, edited by Salvatore Settis, ii, I generi e i temi ritovati (Turin, 1985), pp. 95-152, particularly pp. 103-20, and, by the same author, ‘Immagini e iscrizioni nell’arte “politica” fra tre e Quattrocento’, in ‘Visibile parlare’. Le scritture esposte nei volgari italiani dal Medioevo al Rinascimento, edited by Claudio Ciociola (Naples, 1997), pp. 341-96,

especially pp. 350-52. 11 ‘Hos non modo mente et animo ut virtutum amantissimus hospes digne suscepisti, sed et aule tue pulcerrima parte magnifice collocasti et more maiorum hospitaliter honoratos auro et purpura cultos ymaginibus et titulis admirandos ornatissime tua prestitit magni animi gloriosa conceptio.’ Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Latin 6069, f. 144r. Quoted in Mommsen, ‘Petrarch’, p. 95. 12 The episode is told in Francesco Scalamonti’s biography of Ciriaco: Francesco Scalamonti, Vita clarissimi et famosissimi Kyriaci Ancontani, edited and translated by Charles Mitchell and Edward W. Bodnar (Philadelphia, 1996), p. 67; English translation at p. 130. On this political and educational use of ancient coins and on the connections between the meeting of Petrarch with Charles IV and Ciriaco with Sigismund, see Stefano G. Casu, ‘Ciriaco d’Ancona e la tradizione degli studia antiquitatis nel Veneto fra Tre e Quattrocento’, PhD thesis, University of Pisa, 1999, pp. 34-43, 111-12. For a further discussion of the presentation of the Trajanic coin to Sigismund by Ciriaco d’Ancona, see Robert Glass, ‘Filarete and the invention of the Renaissance medal’, in this issue of The Medal. 13 Inv. 223B. See Giuseppe Toderi and Fiorenza Vannel Toderi, Placchette, secoli XV-XVIII, nel Museo Nazionale del Bargello (Florence, 1996), no. 103, pp. 62-3. The plaquette was probably in the personal collection of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (it is listed as no. 3182 in the Inventario generale di quanto fu consegnato a Gio. Fran. co Bianchi custode della galleria di S.A.R. dopo la morte del di lui genitore, dal 1704 al 1714, Archivio della Galleria degli Uffizi, MS 82; see Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi, ‘Storia della collezione’ in Toderi and Vannel Toderi, Plachette, pp. XIX-XXIII, XLVIII). It is,

of course, possible that it belonged to the Medici family even earlier. 14 The method of re-casting one side of a medal and moving an inscription without changing the image is explained very clearly in John R. Spencer, ‘Filarete, the Medallist of the Roman Emperors’, The Art Bulletin, lxi, 4 (December 1979), pp. 550-61. 15 Speculum metal is an alloy of about two thirds of copper and one third of tin and has good reflectivity. The plaquette’s medal is given as in iron in Toderi and Vannel Toderi, Placchette, p. 62, but in their review of that book Dora Thornton and Jeremy Warren correctly give it as speculum metal; The Medal, 30 (1997), pp. 125-7, at p. 125. 16 Glass, Filarete, pp. 354-5, proposed an attribution of the plaquette to Filarete, stressing the quality of the work. He also noted that the size of image in the plaquette (116mm.) is larger than the corresponding image in the only surviving cast of the medal (at the Museo Correr in Venice, 113mm.). This suggests that the plaquette was derived from an early casting. 17 Hill, Corpus, no. 125, c. This is broken at the four corners because of the fragility of speculum metal. Hill names another example made with the same alloy formerly in the Museo Civico of Ferrara. He states: ‘The material of which [the Oxford example] is made, like the lost Ferrara specimen, suggests that the reverse was intended to be used as a mirror.’ 18 Hill, Corpus, no. 796; Luke Syson in Stephen K. Scher, ed., The currency of fame. Portrait medals of the Renaissance (London, 1994), p. 121; Markus Wesche, ‘Lysippus unveiled: a Renaissance medallist in Rome and his humanist friends’, The Medal, 52 (2008), pp. 4-13, at pp. 4-5; Ulrich Pfisterer, Lysippus und seine Freunde. Liebesgaben und Gedächtnis im Rom der Renaissance

oder: Das erste Jahrhundert der Medaille (Berlin, 2008), p. 395. The example in the British Museum, reproduced in Hill’s Corpus (pl. 131), has a moulded border. 19 Petrarch, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, 45: ‘Il mio adversario in cui veder solete / gli occhi vostri ch’Amore e ’l ciel honora, / colle non sue bellezze v’innamora / piú che ’n guisa mortal soavi et liete. / Per consiglio di lui, donna, m’avete / scacciato del mio dolce albergo fora: / misero exilio, avegna ch’i’ non fôra / d’abitar degno ove voi sola siete. / Ma s’io v’era con saldi chiovi fisso, / non devea specchio farvi per mio danno, a voi stessa piacendo, aspra et superba. / Certo, se vi rimembra di Narcisso, / questo et quel corso ad un termino vanno, benché di sí bel fior sia indegna l’erba.’ Translation from Petrarch’s lyric poems. The Rime sparse and other lyrics, translated and edited by Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA, 1976), p. 110: ‘My adversary in whom you are wont to see your eyes, which Love and Heaven honor, enamours you with beauties not his but sweet and happy beyond mortal guise. / By his counsel, Lady, you have driven me out of my sweet dwelling: miserable exile! Even though I may not be worthy to dwell where alone are. / But if I had been nailed there firmly, a mirror should not have made you, because you pleased yourself, harsh and proud to my harm. / Certainly, if you remember Narcissus, this and that course lead to one goal – although the grass is unworthy of so lovely a flower.’ 20 A third possible case, even though only hypothetical, is the medal made for Benjamin Beer (Hill, Corpus, no. 878). This has a loop quite similar to the one on Filarete’s plaquette in the Bargello, and it was meant to be turned over. The reverse has an inscription all around, but in the centre there

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is no image. See Samuel S. Kottek, ‘Humilitas: on a controversial medal of Benjamin son of Elijah Beer the physician (1497?-1503?)’, Journal of Jewish Art, xi (1985), pp. 41-6, with further bibliography. 21 See Wilhelm Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel des hohen und späten Mitteralters (Leipzig, 1938) and Bruno Singer, Die Fürstenspiegel in Deutschland im Zeitalter des Humanismus und der Reformation (Munich, 1981). 22 ‘Scribere de clementia, Nero Caesar, institui, ut quodam modo speculi fungerer et te tibi ostenderem perventurum ad voluptatem maximam omnium.’ The translation is from Seneca, Epistulae, translated by R.M. Gummere (London, 1953), p. 443. 23 ‘Hinc bene praecipiebatur a Socrate, ut adulescentes in speculo suam imaginem crebro contemplarentur; ea scilicet ratione, ut ii, quibus inesset speciei dignitas, vitiis illam non dehonestarent; qui vero deformiori specie viderentur, formosas se ex virtutibus reddere curarent. Magis autem id ipsum consequi fortasse poterunt, si non tam suam speciem quam alieno probati hominis mores et vivum speculum intuebuntur. Nam si P. Scipio et Q. Fabius (quod omnibus fere generosis mentibus usu evenit) illustrium virorum contemplandi imaginibus excitari se magnopere dicebant; -quae res Julium quoque Caesarem, visa magni Alexandri imagine, ad summam rerum accendit; -quid consentaneum est evenire, cum ipsam vivam effigiem, et adhuc spirans exemplum intueri licet? Quamquam imagines fortasse majorum magis ad aemulationem gloriae animos excitant, propterea quod hominis praesentia minuere plerumque gloriam solet, et viventes comitari consuevit invidia.’ From Humanist educational treatises, translated by Craig W. Kallendorf (Cambridge, MA, 2002), text at p.

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12, translation at p. 6. 24 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, VI, 4. This letter, titled ‘What examples are worth is shown by examples’ (‘Quid exempla valeant exemplis ostendit’), has a special importance, since it explains Petrarch’s point of view about exampla virtutis and the role of images as incitamenta animi. Also the words ‘vivum speculum’ in Vergerio’s text find a correspondence in the pene spirans (‘almost breathing’) image of Augustus presented by Petrarch to Charles IV in 1354. 25 Pier Paolo Vergerio, Liber de principibus Carrarensibus et gestis eorum, Padua, Biblioteca Civica, BP. 158. See Marta Minazzato, entry 11.101, in Gilda P. Mantovani, ed., Petrarca e il suo tempo (Milan, 2006), pp. 387-9, with further bibliography. 26 See Giovanni Gorini, ‘Le medaglie carraresi: genesi e fortuna’, Padova Carrarese, edited by O. Longo (Padua, 2005), pp. 259-67. 27 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of eminent philosophers, with an English translation by R.D. Hicks, i (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1930), p. 165: ‘He [Socrates] recommended to the young the constant use of the mirror, to the end that handsome men might acquire a corresponding behavior, and ugly men conceal their defects by education.’ Vergerio probably did not know Plato’s Alcibiades, even though Chrysoloras had a copy (it is in the MM Gr. 1811 of the Biliothéque Nationale of Paris); see Ernesto Berti, ‘A proposito di alcuni codici greci in relazione con Manuele Crisolora e con Leonardo Bruni’, Studi classici e orientali, xlv (1995), pp. 281-96, and Cesare Vasoli, Le filosofie del Rinascimento (Milan, 2002), p. 195. 28 See Gail E. Solberg, ‘Taddeo di Bartolo: his life and work’, PhD thesis, New York University, 1991, pp. 223-36, 883-960. 29 Nicolai Rubinstein, ‘Political ideas in Sienese

art: the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Taddeo di Bartolo in the Palazzo Pubblico’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxi (1958), pp. 179-207. 30 See, for example, Leonardo Bruni, Dialogi ad Petrum Paulum Histrum, edited by Stefano Ugo Baldassari (Florence, 1994), p. 37. 31 The inscription is in Solberg, ‘Taddeo di Bartolo’, pp. 886-7. 32 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung, inv. 1546, 130mm. in diameter. Bange, Königliche Museen zu Berlin, no. 612, p. 84, attributed the plaquette to Cristoforo di Geremia and stated that it is made of iron, with the reverse polished and silvered to be used as a mirror. The same information is in Hill, Corpus, no. 732a, and in Möbius, ‘Zur Nero-Medaille’, p. 198. I have not been able to see this object or an image of its reverse, but Dr Volker Krahn, curator of the Skulpturensammlung, very kindly informs me that it is in bronze with a high percentage of tin and that, in his opinion, it does not seem ever to have been used as a mirror. 33 Hill, Corpus, no. 732c. 34 As in the case of the Bargello’s Julius Caesar, so for this plaquette it is possible to compare its size with other specimens, suggesting a possible relative chronology: the diameter of the plaquette in Berlin, without the frame, is 114mm., as is the Washington medal, while the example formerly in the Armand-Valton collection in Paris is 108mm. (Hill, Corpus, no. 732b), that now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York is 105mm. (Hill, Corpus, no. 732e), and that formerly in the T. Whitcombe Greene collection is 103mm. (Hill, Corpus, no. 732b). Moreover, the definition of the details of the Berlin plaquette, as, for example, in the decoration of the vase, is very close to that of the Kress medal and quite different from the Whitcombe Greene specimen, which

must be a later cast. 35 John Cunnally, ‘Nero, Seneca, and the Medallist of the Roman Emperors’, The Art Bulletin, lxviii, 2 (June 1986), pp. 314-19, particularly at pp. 316-17. 36 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, XIX, 3: ‘Quid vero non ausurus sim, qui Platoni me conferre non verar? … Non ingeniorum sed eventuum ista collatio est. … Confer modo singula, et armato militi vittatam navem et cesaree lenitati Dyonisii quadrigas, postremo romano principi siculum tyrannum: credo fateberis merito Platonem precellere me fortuna.’ (What would I not dare when I have no fear to compare myself to Plato? ... My comparison is not one of intellect but of circumstances. ... Compare the two situations: the decorated ship with the armed envoy, the four-horse chariot of Dionysius, with Caesar’s courtesy, and finally the Sicilian tyrant with the Roman ruler, and I believe that you will admit that my good fortune surpassed Plato’s.) Translation by A. Bernardo, in Petrarca, Letters, p. 82. 37 On the function of Petrarch’s portrait in the Sala dei Giganti, see Casu, 'Ciriaco d’Ancona', pp. 41-2. 38 Albert Russell Ascoli, A local habitation and a name. Imagining histories in the Italian Renaissance (New York, 2011), p. 141 39 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, XIX, 12: ‘Salutem michi Lelius meus tuis verbis attulit, que michi iaculum anceps et lethale vulnus fuit, simulque Cesaream effigiem pervetusti operis, que si vel ipsa loqui posset vel tu iam contemplari, ab hoc te prorsus inglorio ne dicam infami itinere retraxisse.’ Translation by A. Bernardo, in Petrarca, Letters, p. 102. 40 Pier Paolo Vergerio, De ingenuis moribus et liberalibus studiis: ‘Et quidem quod verum est, litterarum disciplinae neque dementiam adimunt neque malignitatem ... Nam et Claudium sane doctum

accepimus et Neronem, eius privignum atque in principatu successorem, eruditum in primis fuisse constat, quorum prior insignis verecondiae fuit alter crudelitate atque omnibus flagitiis contaminatus’. Text and translation in Humanist educational treatises, pp. 18, 36. 41 Ladislaus was born one month after the death of his father and was raised at the court of Frederick III. Piccolomini’s contribution to the education of the young member of the Habsburg family is part of the special relationship between the future pope and Frederick, who had crowned him poet laureate in 1442. 42 ‘Meminisse namque illos oportet eorum quae ad Traianum Caesarem Plutarchus scribit, qui publico sermone discipulorum delicta in precepteres rerundi commemorat, depravatum namque Neronis ingenium non defuerunt, qui Senecae ascriberent. Socrates, cum indoctum bonae indolis puerum aspexisset, paedagogum eius percussisse traditur.’ Text and translation in Humanist educational treatises, pp. 69, 134. 43 On the personality, life and career of Johannes Hinderbach see Alfred A. Strnad, ‘Personalità, famiglia, carriera ecclesiastica di Johannes Hinderbach prima dell’episcopato’, in Il principe vescovo Johannes Hinderbach (1465-1486) fra tardo Medioevo e Umanesimo, edited by Iginio Rogger and Marco Bellabarba (Bologna, 1992), pp. 1-31, and Daniela Rando, Dai margini la memoria: Johannes Hinderbach (1418-1486) (Bologna, 2003), with further bibliography and an in-depth analysis of the life, education and works of Hinderbach. 44 See Willehad Paul Eckert, ‘Motivi superstiziosi nel processo agli ebrei di Trento’, and Anna Esposito, ‘Il culto del “beato” Simonino e la sua prima diffusione in Italia’, in Il principe vescovo, pp. 383-94, 429-44. Hinderbach

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probably saw here an opportunity to increase his personal fame: he endorsed the trial and the condemnation of the Jews and actively supported the cult of Simonino as a martyr, writing to his learned correspondents about this issue. For example, he sent a ‘beautiful image’ of Simonino to the Istrian humanist Raffaele Zovenzoni (1434-85), who thanked the bishop in a letter on 7 October 1475; A. Esposito and D. Quaglioni, Processi contro gli ebrei di Trento (1475-1478), i, I processi di 1475 (Padua, 1990), p. 85, n. 94. 45 The original diploma of Hinderbach’s doctorate states: ‘[Frederick] cum ad accipiendum sacratissimi Romani Imperii coronam et sceptrum Urbem versus accederet, hunc insignem virum [Hinderbach], iam pridem in secretarium suum electum, secum duxit’; Archivio di Stato di Trento, Archivio principesco vescovile, Sezione Latina, cp. 39, no. 34. Hinderbach acted as a representative of Frederick during his years as a student in Padua, and from 1448 was his delegate to the duchy of Milan; see Alfred A. Strnad, ‘Personalità’, pp. 14-15. 46 In a letter addressed to Hinderbach in 1453. See Roma nel Rinascimento. Bibliografia e note, v (Rome, 1988), p. 250. 47 Biblioteca Comunale di Trento: Alberti’s treatise is in MS W3224; Biondo’s Roma instaurata is Inc. 245 and Roma triumphans Inc. 247. 48 Biblioteca Provinciale di Trento, MS 1357 (W120). 49 Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, MS W 109. 50 See Katherine Walsh, ‘Eredità tardomedievale e germi dell’umanesimo nella formazione spirituale di Johannes Hinderbach’, in Il principe vescovo, pp. 35-63, at p. 50. 51 For Hinderbach’s relationship with empress Leonora and the education of Maximilian, see Daniela Rando, Dai margini, pp. 416-18. In one of the marginal notes of his autograph

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copy of the De liberorum educatione (Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, MS W109, c. 2r), he stated that he had played an important part in the initial conception of Piccolomini’s treatise (‘Ego quoque non mediocris fui huius operis instigator’). 52 A loggia, which originally faced the garden in the new wing of the castle, is a typical example of the artistic renewal of the palace; see Giovanni Dellantonio, ‘Il principe vescovo Johannes Hinderbach e l’architettura: interessi umanistici, motivazioni ideologiche ed impegno pratico’, in Il principe vescovo, pp. 253-70, particularly pp. 264-70. According to Dellantonio, the loggia, at the top of a round tower, reflected Alberti’s ideas on architecture and followed the model of Nicholas V’s tower in the Vatican palace. 53 See Stefano Zamponi, ‘Epigrafi di tradizione antiquaria nel Castello del Buonconsiglio di Trento’, in Studi di antiquaria ed epigrafia per Ada Rita Gunnella, edited by Concetta Bianca, Gabriella Capecchi and Paolo Desideri (Rome, 2009), pp. 84-5, n. 35, and Massimiliano Rossi, ‘“... et onde proceda tanta tarditate, nol possemo considerare”: Alessio Longhi nel Magno Palazzo: ambiti e limiti’, in Il Castello del Buonconsiglio, i, Percorso nel Magno Palazzo, edited by Enrico Castelnuovo (Trento, 1995), pp. 247-61. Rossi attributed the stone mirror to Alessio Longhi and dated it to the period when Bernardo Cles was prince-bishop of Trent. 54 Zamponi, ‘Epigrafi’, pp. 73-85. 55 The inscription is at the ground floor of the Castle: IOHANNES AN / TISTES TRIDEN / TINVS FECIT F[ieri] / MCCCCLXXV. See Zamponi, ‘Epigrafi’, p. 81 and fig. 28; a comparison between individual letters and Feliciano’s alphabet is given at fig. 30. 56 Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, MS W3260, c. 16v. 57 For example, a copy of

Johannes von Lübeck’s Prognosticon super Antichristi adventum Iudeorum Messiae, a learned work written in Padua and dated 1474, which contained a prophecy concerning the advent of the Antichrist on 10 April 1504 as a Jewish false Messiah generated by a demon; Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, MS 1659. For this manuscript, see Walsh, ‘Eredità tardomedievale’, p. 54. Feliciano introduced it with a poem in Italian about his own poverty (c.3r). He also presented Hinderbach with a volume that included works by Pomponius Mela and Vibius Sequester (Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, MS W3260) and another with Ptolomey’s Cosmographia (Österreiche Nationalbibliothek, Inc. 25b8.). 58 MS W3191, cc.42r-62v, written in 1462. This manuscript is not listed as part of the bishop’s library in the recent publications about Hinderbach, but its origin is certain as the paper used has the same watermark as autograph books written by him (the watermark is particularly clear on the pages of the manuscript of Piccolomini’s De liberorum educatione). 59 Hinderbach’s fascination with mirrors is clearly connected with his interest in the genre of Fürstenspiegel. In his library he also had books that can be defined as Specula Episcoporum, typical of the German tradition; see Rando, Dai margini, pp. 197-306). It is worth mentioning that he paid special attention to the Speculum historiale of Vincent de Beauvais, which he had in the edition printed in Augsburg in 1474 (Biblioteca Comunale di Trento, Inc. 322, 423, 424). 60 Marsilio Ficino translated the Platonic dialogues between 1463 and 1468; see Paul Oskar Kristeller, ‘Marsilio Ficino as a beginning student of Plato’, Scriptorium, xx (1966), pp. 41-54. 61 On the history of the Delphic motto, see Eliza G. Wilkins, The Delphic

maxims in literature (Chicago, 1929), pp. 47-115, and Pierre Courcelle, ‘“Nosce te ipsum” du bas-empire au haut Moyen-Âge. L’héritage profane et les développements chrétiens’, in Il passaggio dall’antichità al medioevo in occidente (Spoleto, 1962), pp. 265-95. The connection between the didactic function of medals, the education of a prince and the figure of Alcibiades can be found, almost two centuries later, at the court of Louis XIV of France: a painting by F. Marius, datable to around 1645, now in the Musée de la Monnaie in Paris, represents Jean Warin showing a medal with the image of Alcibiades to the young Louis XIV. Warin is portrayed as the educator of the king. The moral implication of the negative example of Alcibiades is understandable, given that the actual medal, by Alessandro Cesati, had on its reverse the Greek inscription ΚΡΑΤΟΥΜΑΙ (I have self-control). See Mark Jones, Medals of the Sun King (London, 1979), p. 27, and Jean Luc Desnier, ‘L’art de la mémoire dans la médaille d’Henri IV à Louis XIV’, The Medal, 28 (1996), pp. 63-70. I am grateful to Arne Flaten for pointing out this painting to me. 62 For example at c. 28 of Inc. 242 and at c. 512r of MS 1779, both in the Biblioteca Comunale di Trento. See Daniela Rando, ‘“Marginalia” della memoria. Le postille come scrittura autobiografica’, in Michael Borgolte, Cosimo Damiano Fonseca and Hubert Houben, eds, Memoria. Ricordare e dimenticare nella cultura del medioevo / Memoria. Erinnern und Vergessen in der Kultur des Mitteralters (Bologna, 2005), pp. 61-75, at p. 74. 63 The cycle of frescoes continued on into the first room of Hinderbach’s apartments. Around 1534 the frescoes of this room were replaced with images of the same subject by Marcello Fogolino for Bernardo Cles, while

the images in the loggia were in part repainted in the eighteenth century without changing the original composition. See Giuseppe Gerola, Il castello del Buonconsiglio e il Museo Nazionale di Trento (Rome, 1934), p. 184, and Nicolò Rasmo, ‘La pittura in Valdadige nel Quattrocento’, in La pittura in Italia. Il Quattrocento, edited by Federico Zeri (Milan, 1987), i, pp. 103, 117-8, n. 40.

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