| When the Answers
Lead to Questions By Samuel Pennington One of the most seductive aspects of collecting medals is that you never quite know where a purchase will lead. Often it is to more knowledge, but sometimes that very knowledge raises more questions. Such is the case of two disparate medals discussed here. I bought from a local dealer what I judged to be a 17th or early 18th century cast bronze uniface medal with a portrait of a woman, inscribed "Lepida Sergii Galbae Uxor." The medal is holed, oval 94mm x 116mm. and unsigned. (Figure 1.)
Figure 1. I remembered enough high school Latin to know that "Uxor" meant "wife," so she was probably the wife of someone famous. I was not up enough on my Roman history to know that Servius Galba (ca. 4 BC- AD 69) was the Roman emperor who followed Nero and served for one year until he was murdered by his own cavalry. The Internet, as organized by Google and others, has proved to be a great boon to stay-at-home researchers, and Lepida proved to be a great example. I Googled the name "Lepida Sergii Galbae Uxor." One Google link took me to print dealer Donald Heald in New York (http://www.donaldheald.com/) who was offering a 17th century print of Lepida (Figure 2.) by Aegidius Sadeler (ca.1568-1629). In the print she is wearing the same clothing and hairdo as the medal.
Figure 2 Print dealer Heald theorized of the print: "A finely detailed portrait of the wife of Servius Galba (ca. 4 BC- AD 69). This stunning plate belongs to an impressive collection of distinguished portraits of eminent Roman Emperors and Empresses. The prints in this set depicting the classically posed Emperors are based on a series of lost paintings Titian executed between 1536 and 1540 for the "Gabinetto dei Cesari" of Duke Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua. "The companion portraits of the lavishly attired Roman Empresses were not, however, engraved after original works by Titian. The scholar Harold Wethey surmises that these prints 'must be Sadeler's own invention, since they have nothing to do with Titian,’ but a more plausible explanation is that were most likely engraved after paintings by Hans von Achen (1552-1615) and Bartholomeus Spranger (1546-1611), official artists of the Bohemian court of Rudolf II. (The Paintings of Titian, II, pp. 235-6)." Heald and the art historians he quotes have their own questions, but for medal collectors, the question is which came first, the medal or the print? I’d guess the print, since the medal is a simplified version of the print. The next question is, are there more medals in the series after those prints? And if there are, who did the medals? Have an answer? To comment mad@maineantiquedigest.com My second medal that has led to questions is a 77-mm. uniface bronze medal picturing three nude men running. It is inscribed "PHILLIPS-VAN HEUSEN OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD," and the edge is marked "MEDALLIC ART CO, N.Y. BRONZE." (Figure 3.)
Figure 3 I bought it along with a 30-inch mahogany sculpture (Figure 4.) of the three men running with a plaque (Figure 5.) reading "PHILLIPS-VAN HEUSEN OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WILLIAM ZORACH." William Zorach (1887-1967) was a Lithuanian-American sculptor of the first rank.
Figure 4
Figure 5 The sculpture and medal were accompanied by a letter from Portland, Maine, resident, Robert J. Mohr, who explained, "In the mid 1950's I was Advertising & Sales Promotion Director of Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation which had its offices at 417 Fifth Avenue in New York City. The company was primarily in the dress shirt business but wanted to move "big time" into men's sportswear. To bolster this move it was decided that the company would give a highly publicized yearly award to an outstanding sports figure. I wanted to design an award that was as distinctive as the Heisman Memorial Trophy. I asked my assistant, Maurice Berger, to find a sculptor who could create something completely original. "He came up with William Zorach who was affiliated with The Art Students League of New York. I think we paid him about $1,500 and he came up with a wood carving of three runners racing. I don't know how many years the company kept this award going but it was still a yearly event when I left Phillips-Van Heusen in 1963." In an effort to confirm Zorach as the artist, I wrote to several people and the Phillips-Van Heusen Company. The company did not respond. A recent Google search revealed
that Lelands (http://www.Lelands.com) sold a Van Heusen
award medal in August, 2001, for $459.20. It had been awarded to Mickey Mantle
for his 1961 season. The link is (http://www.lelands.com/bid.aspx?lot=655&auctionid=108).
There is no mention of the artist. Dick Johnson, who catalogued the archives of The Medallic Art Company, wrote, "I remember the medal. It is definitely Medallic Art. But I do not remember cataloging it. And that's my problem. I searched a chronological list from 1963 backward to World War II without any luck. Searching for Zorach, Van-Heusen or Phillips-Van Husen. Could his date be wrong?" Joe Levine, president of Presidential Coin & Antique Company wrote that he could not find the medal listed in his records of MACO. Jonathan Zorach, William Zorach’s grandson, wrote back, "I have done a little looking through our records but so far haven't been able to find out anything about this. I think it's possible that my grandfather designed the medal but that someone else did the carving based on his design." So the question is: "Was the medal designed by William Zorach?" Maybe a reader has an answer. On March 2, 2007, a reader did come up with an answer. A New York Times article on January 6, 1961, said that the Van Heusen Company planned to present an award to the major league baseball player judged to have turned in the year's foremost individual performance. The idea was credited to Jerry Coleman, former second baseman for the New York Yankees and then a general sales manager for Van Heusen. Five monthly winners were to be selected from each of the big leagues and the winner would be selected in October. The winner would receive a trophy sculpted by John Hovannes. John Hovannes (1900-1973) was a longtime instructor of sculpture at the Art Students League in New York. To
comment mad@maineantiquedigest.com |
