GALEOTTI, Pietro Paolo

(b. 1520 Monte Rotondo, d. 1584 Firenze)

Italian medallist, goldsmith and sculptor. The son of Pietro di Francesco, he was brought to Florence at a young age by Benvenuto Cellini, who described in his Vita how he found Galeotti in Rome in 1528. Galeotti accompanied Cellini to Ferrara and Paris in 1540 and worked in his Paris workshop with Ascanio de’ Mari (d. 1566) in the Château du Petit-Nesle in 1548-49. He settled in Florence around 1552 and entered into the service of the Mint. He became a Florentine citizen in 1560. A payment to him from Cellini is recorded in January 1552, for chasing done on Cellini’s Perseus. A sonnet of 1555 by the historian and critic Benedetto Varchi (I Sonetti, Venice, 1555) describes Galeotti as an equal rival of Domenico Poggini, another medallist also employed by the Mint. Briefly in 1575, Galeotti appears to have been an assistant engraver at the Papal Mint in Rome, taking the place of Lodovico Leoni (1542-1612).

Bust of Ottavio Farnese

This larger than life-sized bust of Ottavio Farnese was cast in bronze by Galeotti, presumably from a model by Benvenuto Cellini. Ottavio Farnese (1524-1586) reigned as Duke of Parma and Piacenza from 1547 and Duke of Castro from 1545 until his death.

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Gold Coin on Cosimo I (obverse)

Cosimo I de’ Medici, subsequent to his conquest of power and after being nominated duke in 1537, strove to increment the Florentine economy through the creation of a modernized monetary system. A new scudo bearing the Medici arms substituted the previous one, and the gold piastra, valued ten scudi, was coined perhaps more for reasons of prestige than for commercial needs. The piastra shown here is an example of the second minting of the coin, with the right profile of Cosimo dressed in armor on the obverse and a decorated cross on the reverse.

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Gold Coin on Cosimo I (reverse)

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