Musikkselskapets portrettmedaljonger

In 1786, three large portrait medallions were commissioned for the Musical Society in Trondheim, Norway. The medallions were made from wood and painted with antique-style portraits of three local musicians – Niels Krog Bredal, Johan Peter Thams, and Johan Daniel Berlin. The medallions are owned by the NTNU University Museum and currently exhibited at the Ringve Music Museum. Two similar medallions of unknown origin exist; a portrait of Christian Frederik Hagerup, and a medallion bearing the initials P.B. and the date December 31st, 1786. The article conducts a multi-disciplinary study of the five medallions from an object-based research perspective. The authors’ differing museum backgrounds offer the double perspectives of music and cultural history together with material and art history. A technological investigation of the medallions is combined with analyses of style, motives, and décor, against the background of biographical and contextual information. Two likely artisans are indicated, and new light is shed on the «unexplained» medallions. The medallions’ designs are contextualized with reference to the tradition of memorial coins, and the medallions’ social function is construed as part of a bourgeois strategy for self-representation and identity formation.