Lot 598: *Italy, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564),

*Italy, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), celebrated Florentine sculptor, architect and artist, bronze medal (1560) by Leone Leoni, bust right wearing cassock; signed leo on truncation, rev., a blind man walking right, holding staff and water-flask and led by a dog, 60mm (Attwood 61; Pollard 500 = Kress 429; Currency of Fame 52), flawed in the field above portrait and behind the head of the blind man, with brown patina, a very fine early/contemporary cast on a thin flan, very rare
Ex Numismatica Genevensis 4, 2006, lot 816. The medal is well documented and the date of 1560 is attested to by Vasari. In that year too Leoni himself sent two silver and two bronze medals to Michelangelo and in return Michelangelo sent him a wax model of Hercules and Antaeus. Other examples of the medal exist with diameters ranging from 58 to 61mm.