Giovanni V. Melon

Giovanni V. Melon was a metalworker known for his production of portrait medals during the mid-to-late sixteenth century, with documented activity spanning 1565 to 1579. Five of his highly detailed metalworks are preserved in collections, notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Melon specialized in the portraiture of significant political and religious figures of the period. His subjects included high-ranking European power brokers, such as the influential statesman and collector, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and the diplomat Antoine Perrenot, Cardinal de Granvelle.

Melon’s medallic work often featured complex compositions, utilizing the obverse for detailed portraiture and the reverse for narrative or architectural scenes. Examples include the Portrait medal of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (obverse); Il Gesù (reverse) and the piece commemorating Pope Gregory XIII, the Pope Gregory XIII (Ugo Buoncompagni, 1502–1585, pope 1572), Promulger of the Gregorian Calendar. Another detailed work is the Portrait medal of Antoine Perrenot Granvelle (obverse); Don Juan of Austria Receiving the Standard from Granvelle (reverse), which serves as both a portrait and a historical marker of a specific military event.

The documented metalworks by Giovanni V. Melon establish him as a skilled practitioner of Renaissance medallic art. Although his total output is unknown, the extant pieces held in major institutions confirm his patronage among Europe’s elite. Today, high-quality prints derived from these historical objects are often made available through museum digitization programs, placing images of this fine downloadable artwork into the public domain.