Magnificent Portrait Medal of Gianello della Torre

From the 1910 Gutekunst Sale

Jacopo Nizzola da Trezzo (ca. 1515-1589). Portrait Medal of Gianello della Torre of Cremona (1501-1585).

81.0 mm. 173 grams. Bronze. Attwood 91; Armand I, 170, 38; Kress 441a; Pollard 501; Scher ( Currency of Fame ) 55. Medal turn. Portrait to right, IANELLVS TVRRIAN CREMON HOROLOG ARCHITECT / Fountain of Science at center with grateful crowd surrounding, VIRTVS NVNQ DEFICIT. An exquisite early casting, with fine detail and glossy surfaces. Two mould cracks are nearly perpendicular in the right obverse field. Edges filed and smoothed to roundness. Obverse fields smoothed with light pin scratches, reverse chased at vertical flaw extending upwards from T of DEFICIT. A minuscule neat hole is noted outside the border at 12 o'clock. A very handsome portrait medal, described as "an extremely fine contemporary cast of high quality with dendritic patterns in the brown patina" by Morton & Eden in 2018. The Italian medallist and engraver Jacopo Nizzolo de Trezzo left Milan about 1555 and eventually ended up in Madrid. He masterfully rendered this lifelike portrait of another Italian in Spain, the clockmaker Gianello della Torre, described as "Gianello della Torre from Cremora, builder of clocks" in the obverse legend. The reverse translates as "Virtue never fails." On being appointed court clockmaker by Charles V in 1529, della Torre relocated to Toledo, where he lived until his death. He was celebrated for his clocks, his engineering feats, and toy-like automatons, then considered feats of mechanical wonder.

From the Santini Collection of Renaissance Medals. Earlier from Jacob Hirsch's Sale XXVIII of the H.G. Gutekunst Collection, November 1910, lot 40; Jacques Schulman's sale of the Arthur Löbbecke Collection, June 1929, lot 72; Morton & Eden's Auction 97, November 2018, lot 463 (at £33,600).

Estimate: $25000.00 - $35000.00