A. H. Baldwin & Sons Ltd are delighted to announce that they have been chosen to auction the extensive collection of Renaissance and later medals formed by the New York connoisseur and fine art collector, Michael Hall.

The Michael Hall collection comprises in excess of 2000 items, making it by far the largest sale of Renaissance pieces since the Max and Maurice Rosenheim (Sotheby 1923) and Henry Oppenheimer (Christie’s 1936) sales. The first auction is scheduled for May 2010.

Before turning to the world of antiques, Michael Hall’s earlier years were spent in Hollywood. Most memorably, in 1946, he was cast as Fredric March’s son in William Wyler’s “The Best Years of our Lives”. The majority of the collection was formed in the 1960s and ‘70s, a period when Hall was living for much of the time in London.

The medals were purchased from the dealers of the day, in London and other European centres, rather than at auction. Over the ensuing years the collection has remained mostly unseen. Michael Hall gifted most of his British medals to the Los Angeles County Museum some years ago, though some important pieces were retained and will be offered in the sales. The strength of the collection is in early Italian medals, otherwise it remains very comprehensive in the medals of later Italy, France, Germany, the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands.

There are extensive groups of Papal medals, many of which featured in the 1981 publication Roma Resurgens, Papal Medals from the Age of the Baroque; and a group of Florentine Baroque medals that will be seen as a match to the Lankheit Collection sold by Morton & Eden (May 2003).

One of the most important pieces to be included in the first sale will be Pisanello’s cast bronze portrait medal of Cecilia Gonzaga. Antonio Pisano, called Pisanello (c. 1395 – c. 1455), was the pioneering artist who, from around 1435, turned his portraiture into a medallic format, the first artist so to do. (more…)