Lot 136: [ ITALIAN MEDALS ]

JACOPO NIZZOLA DA TREZZO (c. 1514-1589) Mary Tudor (1516-1558), Queen of England, 1553-1558, gold medal, MARIA I REG ANGL FRANC ET HIB FIDEI DEFENSATRIX (Mary I, Queen of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith), bust left, wearing an ornately embroidered gown, a brooch with pendant pearl at the breast, and a cap adorned with jewels, with a veil falling down the back; below, signed IAC TREZ, rev., CECIS VISVS TIMIDIS QVIES (Sight to the blind, tranquility to the fearful), a figure of Peace, wearing antique drapery and a radiate crown, seated on a throne facing three-quarters right, holding palm and olive branches in her raised right hand and, in her left, a flaming torch with which she sets fire to a pile of arms and armour laid out before her; below the throne are a cube with two clasped hands on one of its sides and a pair of scales (symbolizing Stability, Unity and Justice); to the left, a group of suppliant figures is beset by storms; to the right are other figures and a round temple; above rays issuing from a cloud; in the foreground, a river, 67.7mm, 151.80g (Attwood 80a; Scher 54 (both describing the British Museum gold example with a diameter of 69 mm and weight of 183.48g); MI I, 72, 20; Armand I, 241, 3; van Loon I, 10; Bargello 725 (silver, 67.5mm); Middeldorf & Steibral pl. 72 (silver, 68mm, ex Chigi collection); Attwood 80b (silver, 66mm, British Museum); Börner 776 (bronze, 67.5mm), with a black inventory number R2463 inked on the reverse, some field scratches but a superb contemporary cast, one of only two known in gold

Provenance: The late Baroness Batsheva de Rothschild collection, Christie's, 14th December 2000, lot 36; the inventory number R2463 on the reverse may relate to the Nazi requisitions of 1940-1. Batsheva de Rothschild may have acquired the medal by inheritance and its previous owner was most probably Baron Alphonse de Rothrscild (1827-1905) who, it has been suggested, bought it in a lot of twenty-two works of art from the Viennese Habsburgs; The Estate of John R. Gaines, Morton & Eden, 21 April 2005, lot 11; exhibited alongside the other known gold medal of Mary Tudor at the exhibition Renaissance Faces, The National Gallery, London, 15 October 2008-18 January 2009, exhibition catalogue p. 284, 98. Conventionally known as the 'State of England' medal, this was undoubtedly da Trezzo's masterpiece (Attwood, in Currency of Fame, called it 'the most spectacular of da Trezzo's medals'). It was commissioned by Philip in the year of his marriage to Mary and was produced by da Trezzo in London in late 1554. The Queen's bust shows many affinities to Mary's painted portrait by Antonis Mor, commissioned by Charles V and completed in November-December 1554 (see Strong, R., Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, I, pp. 209-212, II, pl. 415). In Mor's painting Mary is shown in three-quarter view but in both the painting and the medal she wears the same pendant jewel, likely to be the one sent to her by Philip in June 1554, before their marriage. That jewel has been described as 'a great diamond with large pearl pendant, one of the most beautiful pieces ever seen in the world' (Hume, M., Two English Queens and Philip, London, 1908, quoted in Strong, op. cit., p. 212). Da Trezzo's actual presence in London in late 1554 suggests that both painter and medallist may have attended the same sitting by the queen. The two artists evidently knew each other and Mor subsequently painted da Trezzo's portrait (see Attwood p. 114, fig. 31). The reverse symbolises the peaceful state of the kingdom and the figure of Peace is said to bear the features of Mary herself. Peace setting fire to arms ultimately derives from Roman coinage and had been used by Cellini in his 1534 medal of Pope Clement VII (Attwood p. 317, fig. 48). Any 16th Century gold medal of this stature is a great rarity. The example in the British Museum is thought to have a Spanish provenance and may be one of the pieces sent to Spain by Philip himself. It was lot 184 in Sotheby's sale of 19 July 1864, when offered as the property of Lt. Gen. John Drummond of Dymock, Gloucestershire, and it re-appeared at Sotheby's as lot 2 in the sale of coins and medals belonging to Reginald Huth, 8 April 1927. Here it was acquired for the record price of £480 by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and subsequently donated to the British Museum. The present example, the only other known in gold, is lighter by some 30g and is very slightly smaller although the quality of the chasing and the manner in which the fields are tooled and the edges cross-filed are virtually identical. In the 'Renaissance Faces' catalogue, Luke Syson has written: 'The two surviving gold specimens were probably intended for Philip himself ..... for his father [Charles V], or indeed for Mary. Even the powerful Granvelle only merited a silver cast....'