MEDAL OF DONA GRACIA MENDES NASI.

Ferrara, 1558

Cast bronze uniface by Pastorino di Giovan Michele de Pastorini (c. 1508-92). Obverse: Profile portrait surrounded by beaded rim enclosing the Hebrew and Latin Legend ‘Gracia Nasi, in the 18th Year of her Age.’ Diameter: 2.5 inches. * Housed in an attractive, wooden case.

“The first unequivocal Jewish medal with a Hebrew legend” D.M. Friedenberg, Jewish Medals from the Renaissance to the Time of Napolean (1970) pp. 43-5. Gracia Mendes Nasi (1510-69) also known by her Christianized name Beatrice de Luna Miques, was one of the wealthiest Jewish women of Renaissance Europe. She married into the international banking dynasty of Mendes, and was an eminently successful business-woman in her own right. In 1558 Dona Gracia leased the holy city of Tiberias from Sultan Suleiman and thus developed major new centers of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. See M.D. Birnbaum, The Long Journey of Gracia Mendes (2003) pp. 63-4; Musee d’Art et d’histoire du Judaisme, Catalogue (Paris), p. 36; and C. Roth, Great Jewish Portraits in Metal (1963), p. 84. This medal previously appeared at auction, Kestenbaum & Company, November 13th, 2014, Lot 420.