Gregory XIII (Ugo Buoncompagni, 1502-1585), Pope 1572 [obverse] 1575

This is a bronze medal portraying Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, made by Giovan Federico Bonzagni in the late sixteenth century. This medal was produced in Italy, a region experiencing immense social and religious upheaval during the Reformation. The Catholic Church’s authority was under threat, and patronage of the arts became a powerful tool for reasserting its dominance and quashing dissent. The imagery on this medal, in which the Pope is presented in profile in the manner of the Roman Emperors of antiquity, is an example of this. By associating themselves with the power of the Roman Empire, the Papacy sought to bolster its own legitimacy. In order to more fully understand this medal, we can look to sources such as Papal records, historical studies of the Counter-Reformation, and biographies of Gregory XIII, all of which allow us to reconstruct the social and institutional contexts in which the medal was created.