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This medal has been cast to commemorate the Roman god MERCURY and the means of the modern trade and transport.
The medal has been designed by the French medalist, Albert DECARIS.
Mercury was a messenger who wore
winged sandals, and a god of trade, merchants, and travel, the son of Maia
Maiestas
and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the
Latin word merx ("merchandise"; compare merchant, commerce,
etc.), mercari (to trade), and merces (wages). In
his earliest forms, he appears to have been related to the Etruscan
deity
Turms, but most of his characteristics
and mythology were borrowed from the analogous Greek god, Hermes. Latin writers rewrote
Hermes' myths and substituted his name with that of Mercury. However, there are
at least two myths that involve Mercury that are Roman in origin.
Albert Decaris (born May 6, 1901 in Sotteville-lès-Rouen; died January 1, 1988 in Paris) was a French artist, engraver, painter
and aquarellist.
av. The
Roman god Mercury
rv. The
modern means of the transport
diameter – 100 mm (4“)
weight – 366.40 gr, (12.92 oz)
metal – bronze, gold plated, beautiful patina
In Virgil's Aeneid, Mercury reminds Aeneas of his mission to found the
city of
Mercury has influenced the name of many things in a variety of scientific fields, such as the planet Mercury, and the element mercury. The word mercurial is commonly used to refer to something or someone erratic, volatile or unstable, derived from Mercury's swift flights from place to place. He is often depicted holding the caduceus in his left hand.
Mercury
did not appear among the numinous di indigetes of early Roman
religion.
Rather, he subsumed the earlier Dei Lucrii as Roman religion was syncretized with Greek
religion
during the time of the Roman Republic, starting around the 4th century
BC. From the beginning, Mercury had essentially the same aspects as Hermes, wearing winged shoes talaria and a winged petasos, and carrying the caduceus, a herald's staff with two
entwined snakes that was Apollo's gift to Hermes. He was often accompanied by a cockerel, herald of the new day, a
ram or goat, symbolizing fertility, and a tortoise, referring
to Mercury's legendary invention of the lyre from a tortoise shell.
Like Hermes, he was
also a messenger of the gods and a god of trade, particularly of the grain trade. Mercury was also considered a
god of abundance and commercial success, particularly in Gaul. He was also, like Hermes, the Romans' psychopomp, leading newly-deceased
souls to the afterlife. Additionally, Ovid wrote that Mercury carried Morpheus' dreams from the
When they described
the gods of Celtic and Germanic tribes, rather than considering them separate
deities, the Romans interpreted them as local manifestations or aspects of
their own gods, a cultural trait called the interpretatio
Romana.
Mercury in particular was reported as becoming extremely popular among the
nations the Roman Empire conquered; Julius
Caesar
wrote of Mercury being the most popular god in Britain and Gaul, regarded as
the inventor of all the arts. This is probably because in the Roman syncretism, Mercury was equated with
the Celtic god Lugus, and in this aspect was commonly accompanied by the Celtic
goddess Rosmerta. Although Lugus may
originally have been a deity of light or the sun (though this is disputed),
similar to the Roman Apollo, his importance as a god of trade made him more comparable
to Mercury, and Apollo was instead equated with the Celtic deity Belenus.
Romans associated
Mercury with the Germanic god Wotan, by interpretatio
Romana;
1st-century Roman writer Tacitus identifies him as the chief
god of the Germanic peoples.
In Celtic areas,
Mercury was sometimes portrayed with three heads or faces, and at Tongeren, Belgium, a statuette of Mercury with
three phalli was found, with the extra
two protruding from his head and replacing his nose; this was probably because
the number 3 was considered magical, making such
statues good luck and fertility charms. The Romans also made widespread use of
small statues of Mercury, probably drawing from the ancient Greek tradition of hermae markers.
Mercury is known to
the Romans as Mercurius and occasionally in earlier writings as Merqurius,
Mirqurios or Mircurios, had a number of epithets representing different
aspects or roles, or representing syncretisms with non-Roman deities. The most
common and significant of these epithets included:
Vulcan created a net out of
unbreakable steel so that he could catch Venus, the goddess of beauty, and Mars, the god of war, in the act
of making love. He was jealous of their relationship, because Venus was his
wife. Vulcan managed to catch them but, afterwards, Mercury stole the net from
the blacksmith god so that he could catch Cloris, a nymph whom he admired.
Cloris was tasked with flying after the sun while it rose and scattering
lilies, roses and violets behind it. Mercury lay in wait for at least several
days until he caught her wing in the net over an unnamed great river in
Ethiopia. Mercury then gave the net to the temple of Anubis at Canopus to
protect the sacred spot. In Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the net is stolen 3,000
years later by Caligorant, who goes on to destroy the
temple and the city.
Mercury's temple in
the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills, was built in 495 BC.
This was a fitting place to worship a swift god of trade and travel, since it
was a major center of commerce as well as a racetrack. Since it stood between
the plebeian stronghold on the Aventine
and the patrician center on the Palatine, it
also emphasized the role of Mercury as a mediator.
Because Mercury was
not one of the early deities surviving from the Roman Kingdom, he was not assigned a flamen ("priest"), but he
did have a major festival on May 15, the Mercuralia. During the Mercuralia,
merchants sprinkled water from his sacred well near the Porta Capena on their heads.
Albert Decaris (born May 6, 1901 in Sotteville-lès-Rouen; died January 1, 1988 in Paris) was a French artist, engraver, painter
and aquarellist.
At only 19, he won
the Concours de Rome, the most prised award for young artists in France
at the time. He has been elected fellow of the French Académie des Beaux
Arts in 1943.
He was first
illustrator of luxury art books, such as Le chant de mon voyage vers la
Grèce (my Grecian travel’s song) by Léon Cathlin, Combourg by Chateaubriand, Les discours des misères
de ce temps (Discourse regarding the misery of the present time) by Ronsard, Les destinées
(destiny) by Alfred de Vigny, etc. In 1931, he produced a
Macbeth. After 1958, President Charles
de Gaulle
was fond of Decaris’s works, especially of the illustration of his own book Le
fil de l’épée (The edge of the sword).
In the 1930s, he
embarked himself into postal stamps carving, resulting in more than 500 such
vignettes, for the French or other (mostly African) postal services. Stamp
collectors are fond of Decaris stamps, as well as of the numerous associated
derivative products: small images or illustrated envelopes sold the first day a
new stamp is emitted.
At the same time, he
was preparing large plates mostly for his own pleasure, on a wide variety of
subjects: careful (almost technical) representations of monuments and places of
interest, as was the task of an engraver in the 19th century; scenes of
history, real life or imaginary; scenes of mythology or of imagination, not far
from surrealism; mere caricatures, with a sense of humour. Some are bounded in
albums, such as The Apocalypse or The Zodiac.
In the whole, he
remains as the best and the most notorious French engraver of the 20th century,
with a very strange mix of classicism and audacity. As noticed by columnist
Yvan Christ “Decaris works take place beyond times and styles. They are made
for duration.” (L'Amateur
d'Art,
Paris, Feb 1988).
