Lot 377: BERTOLDO DI GIOVANNI (c. 1430/1440-1491) Frederick

BERTOLDO DI GIOVANNI (c. 1430/1440-1491) Frederick III (1413-1493), Holy Roman Emperor (1452), bronze medal, 1469, bust left wearing hat and fur-lined gown, rev., the emperor, pope and cardinals on horseback on the Ponte Sant' Angelo, 56.8mm (Hill 912; Armand II, 39, 1; Pollard 283 = Kress 249; Scher 40; Bode p. 35), pierced, a very fine contemporary cast of high quality, with brown patina"

Ex Dieter Gorny, auction 70, 19 November 1994, lot 703. The medal commemorates Frederick III's creation of 122 knights on the Ponte Sant' Angelo in 1st January 1469 in the presence of Pope Paul II following discussions between the emperor and the Pope over Turkish affairs. It is the only dated medal of Bertoldo and is the rarer earlier version with two supposed misspellings in the obverse legend (the emperor's name here ends ...GVS and the last word of the obverse legend is written SENPER whereas the subsequent version corrects these to ...CVS and SEMPER respectively).