Models for Medals

The model for a medal was typically shaped in wax, stone, or wood. Medalists in Germany tended to favor stone and wood, while artists in Italy usually preferred wax (see no. 34, a rare surviving example of a sixteenth-century wax model). In the nineteenth century, the French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d’Angers sculpted expressive models in wax, such as the one of Pierre-René Choudieu (no. 112), for a large number of cast medals and medallions (reviving the tradition of cast medals of the Italian Renaissance). Plaster, as seen in the model for the Jean-Victor Schnetz medal (no. 111), could be used to make a model and for casting after a medal.