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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 103036, member: 57463"]The Currency of Fame Congratulations on winning the medals! "Orders and Medals" is the formal name for this subset of numismatics.  It is no more "OT" than a discussion of banknotes or tokens.  Books on this subject tend to be specialised by topic. [General books about "coins" are fine and we all have one or more -- and might get one from Aunt Mathilda for your birthday.  Yet, we numismatists tend to buy them about certain issues, by nation or series or time, etc.]  The best general introduction is The Currency of Fame: Portrait Medals of the Renaissance by Stephen K. Scher and John Bigelow Taylor.  Portraiture on coins was just an upgrade to putting one's name or symbol on them and that goes back to the first coins.  However, the portrait medal as an artistic work to honor an individual, not a monetary medium identified by a portrait, was a specific invention of one man, Antonio Pisanello. Here are two of mine. The designs are the same.  The bronze (obverse, I think) is second place, for "Sir Isaac Newton: Warden and Master of the Mint" (November 2001); the silver (reverse to me) is first place for "A New Look at the Origins of Coinage" (August 1995).[/QUOTE]