Previous Lot Next Lot

Auction: 390 - Renaissance Plaquettes and Commemorative Medals featuring the Neil A. Goodman Collection - e-Auction
Lot: 100

FRANCESCO DA SANGALLO (1494-1576)
Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (1492-1519), Duke of Urbino 1516 and Lord of Florence. Medal. Bronze, 81mm. High-relief, draped and embroidered-doublet bust in profile left sporting a beard, rev. LAV / RENTIVS / MEDICES / VRBINI Co/ DVX within a wreath. Toderi-Vannel 1422. Attwood suggests that the anepigraphic obverse sets this piece apart from all of da Sangallo's other medals and may therefore be his very first [Italian Medals, 790].
Grandson of Lorenzo "the Magnificent", son of Piero "the Unfortunate", nephew of Pope Leo X and father of Alessandro "il Moro" de' Medici, first Duke of Florence and Catherine, Queen of France. Lorenzo di Piero lived a short but very eventful life, spanning the time of the Medici exile in 1494 to their return to power in 1512. He became Lord of Florence in 1513 after his uncle Giuliano de' Medici handed over control of its government. Niccolò Machiavelli dedicated his treatise "The Prince" to Lorenzo as advice on tactics needed to maintain authority. Ambitious and impatient with Florence's republican system of government, Lorenzo convinced his uncle Pope Leo X to make him Duke of Urbino in 1516 which did not sit well with the city's previous Duke Francesco Maria I della Rovere who launched the protracted War of Urbino. After della Rovere recaptured the city, Lorenzo, at the head of a 10,000-man Papal army retook Urbino, being wounded in the process.
He did not adopt a French style beard (thus dating the portrait here) until 1518, the year of his short-lived marriage to Madeleine de la Tour daughter of the Count of Auvergne. Madeleine gave birth to their daughter Catherine in April of the following year, but died soon after from what is believed to have been the plague (though it is speculated, her death was from syphilis contracted from her spouse). Tragically her husband Lorenzo died less than a week later "worn out by disease and excess". Lorenzo was buried at the Church of San Lorenzo in Michelangelo's Medici Chapel, and is represented by the famous figure "Il Pensieroso". An Extremely Fine old cast. Ex Gorny and Morsch 217, October 17, 2013, lot 4606.
From the Neil A. Goodman Collection

Estimate
$800 to $1,200

Starting price
$550