The Election of the Duke de Loubat, Member of the Institut de France 20th century

This bronze medal was made by Frédéric Charles Victor de Vernon to celebrate the election of the Duke de Loubat to the Institut de France in 1907. I'm thinking about the artist, Vernon, and how he might have felt trying to capture the essence of this Duke. Carving into metal isn’t like painting, it's a slower, more deliberate kind of dance. What was it like for him to render the textures of fabric and the subtle details of a human face on a small coin? Did he feel pressure to immortalize this man, to capture his legacy in bronze? The Duke’s profile is the focal point. Vernon captures his likeness with incredible precision. On the flip side is an elegant palm frond with an inscription. The act of making art, whether it's a painting or a medal, is really a form of embodied expression, an ongoing conversation with others. We are all drawing from the same well, borrowing and building upon what has come before. It's like a game of telephone, where ideas morph and evolve over time.