Nineteenth Century French Medallic Artists, Sculptors And Vin Mariani
French medallic artists, certainly those of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were considered to be world class. The French artists made medallic art a genre equal to sculpture and the best work is so fine it is equal to painting. Practice made perfect and artists such as (1788-1856) would make portraits larger than medallions. They were portrait size - around 8” x 10”. The next part of the process was to use pantonic reduction to reduce the size of their sculptures to the size of medallions, thereby the great detail in the principal work was not lost in the reduction.