British School at Rome: Papers of the British School at Rome (9.1920)

50 The British School at Rome.
Pope wore a cappa on that occasion. Since the same reverse, referring
to the Instauracio Templi Petri, is attached to the portrait of the Pope
clad in a cope, that variety was probably also represented in the founda-
tion deposit. The specimen of the medal with the cappa in the Biblio-
theque Nationale in no way supports the opinion of Geymiiller, who
says1 that this variety is much superior in workmanship to the other,
and represents the authentic work of Caradosso, the others being
imitations. To judge from the cast, it is, if anything, inferior.
There are few artists of whom it it so true as it is of Caradosso that
as soon as one begins to examine the grounds for the attribution of their
works it crumbles away. There is but one single extant work of his
that we can identify with certainty. Yet it is generally believed that he
revolutionised the medallic art ; that he not merely marks, but himself
actually effected, the transition from the fifteenth century style to that of
the sixteenth ; and that much of the change in the character of the art
which it is customary to attribute to Cellini is really due to him. This
estimate is not based merely on modern conjectural attributions ; his
contemporaries, such as Pomponio Gaurico, Sabba Castiglione and
Benvenuto Cellini, mentioned him with praise ; for the first of these
writers, he is one of the only two caelatores of the time worthy to be
mentioned by name.5 The medals which we have been describing at
any rate mark the transition to the new style, and coincide with the
beginning of his activity in Rome ; it is not therefore wholly fantastic
to see in them the hand, or at least the influence, of the man who was
recognized as the leading metal-worker and goldsmith of his time in
the Papal service.
It is possible that his activity as medallist was chiefly confined to
the first years of his Roman period, and that when Cellini first settled at
Rome in 1518 or 1519 Caradosso was doing comparatively little of this kind
of work, although, as we have seen, he was engraving dies for a medal in
1522. Naturally therefore his medals might escape notice in Cellini’s
Autobiography (which he first began to write about 1558) or in his Treatise
on the Goldsmith’s Art (which he did not begin until about 1566).
Contemporary with the medals of Julius attributed to Caradosso
is an interesting little struck piece3 bearing the signature (V ’ C ') of the
1 Projets primitifs, p. 258, No. 67. 2 De Sculptura (1504), c. xvi., ad fin.
3 Armand, i. 116. 10.