Watch List notes:

Alfonso Ruspagiari (1521-1576), Unidentified Woman and Her Admirer, uniface lead medal, sculptural female bust right, her hair elaborately dressed and coiled, wearing earring and pendant necklace, her breasts exposed and with drapery tied around her midriff and on her left shoulder; her portrait set within oval frame from the right edge of which a male head looks towards her; signed on the truncated right arm, A R, 69mm (Attwood 646; Arm. I, 216,5; Pollard 519 = Kress 450; Scher, Currency of Fame, 73 and p. 146), pierced, a very fine contemporary cast, very rare. The medal has been much discussed, in particular by Mary Levkoff in Currency of Fame (pp. 187-7), who described it as "one of the most compellingly romantic images in medallic art from the Renaissance". The principal subject represents a sculptural image of womanhood admired by a male head emerging from the scrollwork of the oval frame, perhaps an allusion to Ovid's story of Pygmalion, the sculptor who fell in love with the statue of a woman that he had created. Alternatively, if in fact the second head is female then the medal portrays youth and old age and becomes an illustration of Vanitas.
Estimate: 2000-3000 GBP