Papal Medals
The Foundation’s numismatic treasure, composed of approximately 2.500 medals and coins, is an important part of the Private Collection due to the quality and the quantity of the specimens.The most substantial and impressive part of this collection is the series of Papal medals which, in the specific field of medals issued by Popes of the Roman Catholic Church, may be considered second only to the Vatican Library's Medagliere. There are also one hundred and fifty extremely beautiful Papal coins, which are mainly splendid silver piastres, though several specimens such as the sequins, half sequins and the Roman half scudo issued during the Vacancy of the Holy See in 1740 are gold.
The medals in this collection concern Popes starting from Pope Martin V, born Colonna, to Benedict XVI, thus reflecting six centuries of the history of Roman Catholic Papacy. There are also medals issued by the competent authorities during vacancies of the Holy See.
Naturally, such a vast and rich collection proves to be a gallery of some of the most important medallists in the art of engraving both in Italy and abroad, ranging from Cristoforo Foppa to Alessandro Cesati, Benvenuto Cellini to Giacomo Antonio Mori, Gaspare Mola to Gasparo Morone-Mola and the members of the Hamerani family - who for around one hundred and fifty years struck medals for the Holy See - up to the medallists-artists of more recent times. To name a few, Tommaso Mercandetti, Giuseppe and Nicola Cerbara, Francesco and Giuseppe Bianchi in the nineteenth century and Aurelio Mistruzzi, Pietro Giampaoli, Francesco Messina and Giacomo Manzù in the twentieth century.
The collection preserves unique specimens such as the medallion, of 82 millimetres in diameter, bearing a depiction of the interior of Saint Peter’s Basilica on the reverse. Executed in 1869, by Giuseppe Bianchi during the Papacy of Pope Pius IX, on the occasion of the opening of the First Vatican Council, various examples of this medallion of unrivalled beauty were struck in silver and bronze yet only one specimen was in gold and is precisely the one owned by the Fondazione Roma.
The Foundation owns many other extremely rare gems, such as the annual medal of the second year of the Papacy of Pope Innocent X showing the façade of the building raised by this Pope on the Capitoline hill in 1645 which, one century later, housed the Capitoline Museums (Musei Capitolini).
Also the rich series of Pope Pius XI medals, one of the great numismatic popes, like Urban VIII and Pope Alexander VII who reigned in the difficult years from 1922 to 1939 is distinguished in this collection. The Foundation owns all the annual gold and silver medals issued by Pope Ratti and the medallion bearing the façades of Saint Peter’s and Saint John Lateran Basilicas issued to commemorate the Lateran Treaty ratified in 1929.
As well as Papal medals and coins, the Foundation’s collection includes a discreet number of medals related to religious or various other subjects. Amongst these, the extremely beautiful mid sixteenth century medallion depicting the Crucifixion, melted, retouched by burin and patinated by Giovanni Antonio De Rossi and the splendid gold medal coined in Paris for the Coronation of Charles X in 1825.
