At our 6th Auction – medals

Today we had medals. There won’t be many of them at our 6th auction, but most of the items on offer are definitely worth attention.

The art of medal-making in Poland flourished for good in the sixteenth century along with the development of the Renaissance and continues to this day. At our event, this section opens the medal of the incredible rarity of the Bishop of Krakow, Franciszek Krasiński at the age of 48, with the timeless sentence: “POST LABOREM MELIORA SPERO”. The medal served as a model for Jan Matejko to prepare a portrait of the bishop, published in the form of a woodcut in the Illustrated Weekly. It is these small nuances that show how important a role in the transmission of history is the art of medals, which from the very beginning is a carrier of information much more durable and effective than any other. The importance of medals as a witness to history and propaganda tools have been perfectly used by rulers over the centuries. It is enough to look pragmatically at the medal from an angle other than a work of art. Medals at significantly lower production costs compared to even monuments could commemorate all historical moments, images of rulers or other outstanding personalities. An important aspect was that it is simply difficult in the world to imagine that someone would manage to destroy the entire print and erase its trace, which was not a problem in the case of all monuments, not to mention the fact that their range was incomparably greater than that of the most expensive monument . We will close the section of medals with a magnificent and rare copy of a series of 94 medals commemorating the historical events of Russia, in which Princess Olga on the river bank, surrounded by warriors and the court, receives a plan of the city of Pskov, which for most of us probably evokes memories of the unsuccessful five-month siege of the city by Batory. Between these two values ​​there are 30 more noteworthy delicious items, which cannot be summarized in a few sentences, so we cordially invite you directly to our auction site, and for encouragement, we only put a few photos.

The auction will take place on November 22, 2020 – auction at: www.RDA.onebid.pl