Lot 143: Alfonso Ruspagiari de Reggio Emilia (1521-1576) Portrait of a Young Woman, uniface lead medal, 56mm., an attractive conte...

Alfonso Ruspagiari de Reggio Emilia (1521-1576)
Portrait of a Young Woman, uniface lead medal, 56mm., an attractive contemporary cast, pierced at 12 o'clock

Obverse: bust of a young woman three-quarters right, her head turned in profile to the right, her hair combed back off her forehead and tied behind with a thin veil, wearing loose drapery over her shoulders and a pearl necklace, a bow and two arrows slung from her left shoulder

Reverse: blank

The young woman is unidentified, but the occasion for the portrait is certainly a wedding, as pearls, symbol of the Virgin, were a traditional wedding gift, while the attributes of Diana are a symbol of chastity. The medal is possibly by Ruspagiari who made numerous portraits of young women, some identified but some probably idealised. It is similar for example to the portrait of Camilla Ruggieri (about whom nothing else is known).Ruspagiari was very influential and had several associates and close followers, many of them goldsmiths and artists of Reggio-Emilia, among them the artists Lelio Orsi and Antonio Begarelli, and the goldsmith Signoretti, the painter and sculptor Alessandro Ardenti of Faenza, and the die-engraver and medallist Giambattista Cambi, called Bombardia.