Watch List notes:

*Gian Antonio Signoretti (d. 1602), Giulia Pratonieri, uniface lead medal, three-quarter length bust facing right set on a voluted plinth, wearing elaborate helmet and drapery, two spears tucked under her left arm; signed on volute below her right arm, s, 68mm (Attwood 653; Arm. I, 213, 3; Clifford 154), pierced, some marks but an extremely fine contemporary cast [ex Clifford collection]. Ex Michael Hall collection, Baldwin's, 4 May 2010, lot 168. Pollard mentions that aside from the Kress example (Pollard 522 = Kress 453, in a lead alloy) only two specimens of this medal are recorded, being those in Berlin (Bange 261, a later cast in bronze) and the Bargello (Vannel & Toderi 630, also in bronze). To these should be added the damaged gilt-lead specimen in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Attwood 653a) and the lead specimen formerly in the Clifford collection (1996 catalogue, lot 154). As noted in Currency of Fame the finest examples of these uniface medals of the Emilian school are cast on wafer-thin lead flans, as is the case with the present medal and the piece formerly owned by Clifford. Signoretti's fine mannerist style along with that of other members of the Emilian school of medallists such as Ruspagiari and Bombarda has been connected to the art of the painter Lelio Orsi of Novellara (c. 1511-87) who had an involvement with the mint of Reggio. Signoretti himself wrote two letters to Alfonso Gonzaga, Count of Novellara in December 1569 describing the coins to be struck there under Orsi's supervision. (1500 - 2000)