Three-Dimensional Communication: Medals and Engraved Gems in the Republic of Letters

The European Republic of Letters has long been considered a primarily literary phenomenon. But what about small, portable sculptures like engraved gems and medals that travelled with letters in the post? Works of art, monuments of antiquity, and stores of economic value, these miniature sculptures wove together diplomacy, the art market and historical research. In the eighteenth century, medals and gems also became a vehicle for the spread of new portrait types. I will study the letters of the diplomat and art dealer Philipp, Baron von Stosch at The Hague to better understand their patterns of circulation and reconsider the transnational origins of the classicizing portrait.

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