Medal: Pietro Albano

Sperandio di Bartolommeo Savelli was an Italian medallist, architect, sculptor, painter, bronze and cannon caster. He was the son of a Roman goldsmith, Bartolommeo di Sperandio Savelli. Sperandio is first mentioned as a goldsmith at Ferrara in 1445 and again in 1447. He appears to have returned to Mantua at some point and to have been employed by Borso d'Este, Marquess of Ferrara, by the early 1460s. As indicated by the inscription, the medal portrays one Pietro Albano, who could possibly be identified as the famous thirteenth-century Italian physician, philosopher, and astrologer, whose activity in Padua marked the rise of city as a center for medical studies. The reverse shows a pensive Mercury sitting on a bale.The piece was possibly cast after a lead original in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.