CORPVS
NVMISMATVM
OMNIVM
ROMANORVM
PONTIFICVM
(C.N.O.R.P. – Vol. III)

Rome 2004 – edited by the author.
In 4° (cm 31,5 x 23,5) – 656 pages – Print run of 300 copies – 321 medals catalogued – 650 black and white photographs, 36 colour recapitulatory plates.
Introduction by Philip Attwood
Curator of Medals The British Museum.
Secretary British Art Medal Society.

This is the third in a series of four volumes cataloguing and detailing all the papal medals of the XV and XVI centuries. This third volume reaches 1585, obviously including all the medals of Gregory XIII’s papacy (1572-1585). The medals are catalogued according to a new method, respecting the chronological sequence of the Popes, and the chronological order in which they were created under each Pope. For each medal a standard file has been drawn up occupying two pages, providing life-size photographs of the obverse and reverse, the name of the artist, all the distinguishing technical data, their characteristic features, the rarity and a brief historical account of the event commemorated.
The files are completed by the explanation and translation of the inscriptions, the most important bibliographical information and additional photographs to illustrate the information given. The files are preceded by a brief history of the papal medal and the volume is completed by short biographies of the artists, an ample bibliography, an alphabetical index of the inscriptions on the reverses and recapitulatory plates with pictures of all the medals catalogued.

… What has been sadly lacking until now has been a full corpus of all papal medals in which the status of each individual piece is explained and the nature of its value as an historical document thus clarified. The series of volumes that Adolfo Modesti is currently producing, of which the present volume is the third, admirably fills this gap. It is certain that the elucidation of this crucial part of medallic history will be of immense service not just to medal historians but to those whose interest lies within the field of European history.
Adolfo Modesti is to be congratulated on this volume, which continues the high standards of the preceding two. We look forward to the future volumes.

(Philip Attwood)