Galeazzo Mondella

Galeazzo Mondella, known as Moderno (Verona, 1467 – Verona, 1528),^[1] was an Italian goldsmith and medallist who became one of the most important designers of bronze plaquettes during the Italian Renaissance.^[2][3]

Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella)
Born	Galeazzo Mondella 1467 Verona, Italy
Died	1528 Verona, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Known for	Plaquette and medal design, gem engraving
Notable work	Approximately 50 plaquette and 10 medal designs
Movement	Renaissance
Patron(s)	Gonzaga courts at Mantua and Bozzolo, Cardinal Domenico Grimani and other patricians of Venice

Life and career

Early career

Mondella began his career as a medallist at the court of Mantua, where in 1487 he adopted the professional name "Moderno" (meaning "the Modern"). This name was chosen in contrast to his contemporary, the Mantuan bronzist Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, who was in the same year called "Antico" ("the Ancient") for the first time.^[4] Mondella had joined the Goldsmiths' Guild of Verona in 1485 at age eighteen.^[1][5] Moderno's pax design dated 1490, the Madonna and Child with Saints Anthony Abbot and Jerome (see Works no. 14) was signed on one cast "Mondella," but "Moderno" on almost all remaining casts.

Family connections

His brother Girolamo Mondella (1464–1512) was a celebrated painter with close ties to the Este court at Ferrara.^[1] This family connection probably influenced Moderno's early four-part series of Hercules plaquettes, which may have been created as a tribute to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara (r. 1471–1505).^[5] The connection between the courts was strengthened when Ercole's daughter Isabella d'Este married Francesco II Gonzaga of Mantua in 1490.

Professional activities

From approximately 1485 to 1505, Moderno worked intermittently as a medallist at Mantua, also serving a cadet branch of the Gonzaga family at their court in Bozzolo.^[6][2] He served two terms as president of the Goldsmiths' Guild of Verona, from 1496–1497 and 1506–1507.

Artistic development

Moderno's artistic style evolved significantly throughout his career. His early work showed the influence of local Veronese artists including Francesco Bonsignori, Liberale da Verona, the Falconetto family, and particularly Andrea Mantegna. Through study of contemporary masters from Emilia, Lombardy, and the Veneto—such as Vincenzo Foppa, Antonello da Messina, the Bellini family, Bartolomeo Montagna, and Giovanni Battista Cima—his style developed toward a confident Roman classicism reminiscent of Raphael.^[2]

Moderno may have had access to Mantegna's studio at Mantua, either before 1488 or during 1490–1506.^[3] His Venetian patron Cardinal Domenico Grimani (1461–1523) introduced him to patrician families in Venice and possessed extensive collections of Raphael's drawings and cartoons.^[7] The Cardinal may possibly have facilitated a visit by Moderno to Rome around 1509–1511.

Moderno's acknowledged masterpieces (Works, nos. 47 and 48) are his two large gilded silver reliefs of 1506-1507, for the doors of Cardinal Grimani's famous Cabinet ["Scrigno"], which after being looted from the Ducal Palace in Venice (during the first years of the Austrian occupation, at the turn of the 19th century), are now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Later career and legacy

Moderno assumed leadership of his family workshop in 1512, after which his independent plaquette inventions appear to have declined. Following the Imperial occupations of the Veneto (1509–1516), the Mondella family was restored to the Verona council of nobles in 1517.^[1][2] There follows a ten-year gap in his documented activity, during which Giorgio Vasari suggested Moderno may have traveled to France.^[8][6]

He had returned to Verona by 1527 and wrote his will there on May 5, 1528. The family workshop was inherited by his son Giambattista Mondella (1506–c. 1572),^[1] who with various collaborators continued to produce Moderno's designs for decades, with some production also occurring in Padua.

Recognition and influence

Moderno's work attracted significant attention from prominent figures of his time. His plaquettes were collected by Erasmus^[9] and drew the interest of northern European artists including Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, as well as French sculptors. One of the best of them, the David and a Companion with the Dead Goliath (see Works no. 32) provided -- in its kneeling, secondary figure -- a prototype for a comparable figure in Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1536) in the Sistine Chapel.^[2][3]