Le medaglie del Museo Nazionale del Bargello: Europa occidentale (Regni di Inghilterra, Scozia, Irlanda, Francia, Navarra, delle Spagne, di Portogallo e Algarve), secoli XV-XVII. Storia della collezione e catalogo

The Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence holds a very large number of medals once collected by the Medici, the Lorraine, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century keepers of the Uffizi Gallery. This collection has not been published and reproduced in its full extent (if we exclude its section concerning the States of the Italian peninsula). This catalogue describes the pieces dated before 1700 that can be traced back to to the centres of production west of the Holy Roman Empire. The opening essay reconstructs in detail the history of the Medici-Lorraine medal collection from the 18th century onwards. The significance of this collection stems first and foremost from its entanglements with social practices, collecting trends and disciplinary developments over several centuries. Its earliest accessions can be said to reflect the scope of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Florentine diplomacy and scholarship. Another point of interest lays in the rarity of many pieces and in the possibility to trace their history from the seventeenth century onwards. The study of the single pieces (many of which are tied to particularly complex scenarios or under-explored areas of production) has provided an opportunity to advance the state of the art in the single reconstructions and with respect to the methodological and geographical problems raised by medal scholarship.