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Transmitting knowhow
The secret of the success of this Italian story lies in the far-sightedness of the original concept, which instituted a museum and a school-cum-workshop alongside the “coin factory” The Scuola dell’Arte della Medaglia dell’Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato is the internationally renowned medal-making school of the Italian State Printing Office and Mint. On top of executing custom projects for prestigious customers, it provides state-of-the-art training for aspiring modellers and engravers, both Italian and international. Italy has a venerable tradition in medallic art, which developed on our peninsula during the Renaissance, when it parted ways with the models of the Roman era. The art of medal design and engraving is inseparably linked to the names of Benvenuto Cellini, Leone Leoni and, above all, Pisanello, who created what is considered to be the first modern portrait medal: the bronze medallion that commemorates the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus and his participation in the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438). The evocative power of this art form continues unabated today: for over half a millennium it has condensed the events and the great personalities of history into figurative forms and symbols. Much of the merit goes to institutions such as the School of the Art of Medal-Making, which was set up by the Italian Royal Mint in 1907 and taken over by the State Printing Office
in 1978. The secret of the success of this Italian story lies in the far-sightedness of the original concept, which instituted, alongside the “coin factory”, not only a museum but also a school-cum-workshop. The Scuola dell’Arte della Medaglia (SAM) is the only example of its kind in the world, a seedbed for modellers and engravers who go on to work in mints on every continent. Every three-year course provides an ad hoc curriculum for students and scholarship holders from all over the world (so far with the only exception of India), who benefit from the farsightedness of the exhaustive educational programme developed by Laura Cretara and Rosa Maria Villani, who have enriched the main course of study with equally indispensable disciplines, such as grand feu enamelling and gem engraving – the latter being an art in which the great Renaissance medallists excelled – as well as embossing and chiselling. The overriding imperative is complete mastery of the representation of reality, of human anatomy and the forms of nature, with or without the aid of computer graphics. The value of digital technology in this field is fully recognised (particularly in crucial phases such as the design and production of punches) and taught
This page, (centre) the obverse of the 2015 Vatican commemorative coin. Top, the plaster low-relief model is eight times larger than the final medal. The prototype is first carved in wax or other modelling material, which is then duplicated in two successive moulds (“negative” and “positive”) to create the final prototype. Opposite page, the cherub’s robe is carved on the reverse of the same medal.
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