PASTI, Matteo de'

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was primarily a theoretician, not a practitioner of visual arts. However, he designed his self-portrait for a cast medal in the style of antique Roman imperial coins. The medal was executed by Matteo de’ Pasti.

This is the reverse of the medal representing Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta. It shows the figure of Fortitude, holding a broken column and seated on two elephants. The Malatesta family adopted the elephant as part of their heraldry, as it stood for strength and fame.

Guarino Guarini (1374-1460) was one of the most revered educators and humanists of the early Italian Renaissance. He was best known as the headmaster of a famous humanistic school at the court of the duke of Ferrara. Though born into a poor family, he received an excellent Latin education in his native Verona and then at Padua and Venice. When the Byzantine teacher Manuel Chrysoloras passed through Venice in 1403, Guarino followed him to Constantinople and spent five years studying there (1403-1408). After he returned to Italy about 1408, he struggled to establish himself as a teacher in Florence or Venice. In 1418 he married a wealthy woman of Verona. With the backing of his wife’s family, he opened a successful boarding school in Verona and in 1420 was hired by the city to lecture on rhetoric and newly discovered works of Cicero.

In 1429 Guarino accepted an invitation of the ruler of Ferrara to become tutor to the heir to the throne, on condition that the court school also be open to other promising students. His school, which attracted the sons of prominent families from many parts of Italy, was one of the two earliest and most influential humanist schools in Italy; the other was the similar school formed at the court of Mantua by Vittorino da Feltre.

Matteo de’ Pasti chose to portray Guarino in uncompromising realism, a forceful, determined personality. There are few renaissance portrait medals that convey so sensitively and intimately not only the features, but also the personality of their subject.

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-1468), lord of Rimini, Fano, and Cesena, one of the most noted condottieri of the age, clearly understood both the commemorative and diplomatic potential of medallic portraiture. Inspired by the medals cast in Milan, he employed Matteo de’ Pasti, who produced at least sixteen different medals bearing either his likeness or that of his mistress and later wife, Isotta degli Atti (c. 1432-1474). She was the daughter of a well-to-do Rimini merchant, and she became Sigismondo’s mistress sometime about 1446, the year memorialised on the reverse of the present medal. Renaissance princes commonly had mistresses, but it was rare for a prince to actually marry his mistress. Sigismondo did just that about 1455-56.

The present medal is one of five produced in honour of Isotta. The elegant portrait on the obverse is remarkable for the intricate hair arrangement. The elephant on the reverse was a Malatesta emblem and appeared as the crest on the Malatesta arms. The medal as a whole was probably created as a pendant to one of Sigismondo, on which he faces in the opposite direction.

A warm relationship existed between Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472), an Italian architect and Renaissance humanist polymath, and Matteo de’ Pasti, the medalist. The design of this medal was probably a collaborative effort. Clearly the reverse, a winged eye surrounded by a laurel wreath and the accompanying motto, was Alberti’s invention.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was an Italian architect and Renaissance humanist polymath. The obverse of the medal represents Alberti wearing close fitting dress, while the reverse shows a laurel wreath within which a winged human eye.

The inscription running around the profile portrait reads: “SIGISMONDVS.PANDVLFVS.DE.MALATESTIS.S.RO.ECLESIE.C.GENERALIS”.

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-1468), popularly known as the Wolf of Rimini, was a famous member of the Italian House of Malatesta and lord of Rimini, Fano, and Cesena from 1432. He was widely considered by his contemporaries as one of the most daring military leaders in Italy and commanded the Venetian forces in the 1465 campaign against the Ottoman Empire. He was also a poet and patron of the arts.

There are several versions of de Pasti’s portrait medal of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta.

Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-1468), lord of Rimini, Fano, and Cesena, one of the most noted condottieri of the age, clearly understood both the commemorative and diplomatic potential of medallic portraiture. Inspired by the medals cast in Milan, he commissioned two medals from Pisanello about 1445, which depict him in field armour and are decorated with heraldic devices. Shortly thereafter, he employed Matteo de’ Pasti, who produced at least sixteen different medals bearing either his likeness or that of his mistress and later wife, Isotta degli Atti.

On the obverse portraits by Matteo, Sigismondo appears in profile facing to the left, wearing elegant court dress, as on the present medal, less often Sigismondo is depicted in armour. In contrast to Pisanello, whose design for the reverse of the medal suggests a narrative, Matteo made a specialty of focusing on a single imposing element. He did that here with the majestic forms of the newly built castle of Rimini, the first medal to feature an architectural subject.

The metal was struck for the laying of the cornerstone of San Francesco in Rimini (called Malatatesta Temple). It shows the fa�ade designed by Leon Battista Alberti. The church remained unfinished, the fa�ade is known from this medal.

The picture shows the tomb of Isotta degli Atti, the mistress of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Cappella di Isotta.

By 1449 Matteo was resident in Rimini, where he married Elisa di Giovanni Baldigara. There he was joined by Agostino di Duccio and other Venetian sculptors, working on the construction and decoration of two large funerary chapels (1447-c. 1452) for Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, and his mistress, Isotta degli Atti, in San Francesco (known as the Tempio Malatestiano). Initially Matteo was probably the organizer and supervisor of this project, but c. 1450 Sigismondo decided to rebuild the church and entrusted the project to Leon Battista Alberti. Matteo, however, continued to work there, and the scheme for the interior decoration, in a gothicizing, Venetian style, is his work; originally an inscription naming de’ Pasti as architect ran across an architrave.

The Chapel of Isotta houses the tomb of Isotta degli Atti, Pandolfo Malatesta’s lover and later his wife. The chapel is decorated with reliefs of music-making angels. The reliefs are controlled by a subtle sense for placing the image in its frame. Animated figures are shown in motion.

This chapel also houses Giotto’s Crucifix painted during his sojourn in Rimini.