oa Holding, Handling, Flipping. Remarks on the Perception of Medals (Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)

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Unlike coins, medals were not bound by any restrictions of size or weight. Cast or struck, they were usually larger, thicker, and more three-dimensional than coins, usually with the obverse and/or reverse shaped in high relief. This phenomenon is especially noticeable in the three-quarter facing portraits frequently seen on medals. However, the compositional scheme of medals, usually similar to that of coins and quite repetitive, was definitively not a fixed standard (as evidenced by e.g. a variety of medal shapes, and inconsistency in the orientation of die axes). The paper focuses on some artistic devices resulting from the three-dimensionality of medals and those regarding their tangibility; it examines and briefly discusses the ways different medals were or could have been handled and perceived by their owners.