Medal: Self-portrait

Alfonso Ruspagiari

model ca. 1566 or 1571 (cast 18th or 19th century) · Bronze (Copper alloy with chocolate brown patina). · Robert Lehman Collection

The obverse shows a half-length, frontal self-portrait with the sitter’s head turned left and holding a syrinx in his right hand; the reverse is incused. This very painterly medal could have been made at the occasion of Ruspagiari’s appointment as superintendent of the mint at Reggio nell’Emilia in 1571. The age of the sitter is about forty-five so the medal may date to about 1566.The composition was based on a drawing of a female bust attributed to Lelio Orsi (Galleria Estense, Modena), which Ruspagiari could have transformed into a self-portrait. By doing so he deliberately played with his sexual identity, possibly intending himself to be seen as an uomo universale shaped after Plato’s androgyne. The drawing may have been made by Orsi after the medal. The weak aftercast may date to the eighteenth or nineteenth century.

Artist

Alfonso Ruspagiari

Date

model ca. 1566 or 1571 (cast 18th or 19th century)

Medium

Bronze (Copper alloy with chocolate brown patina).

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975