As artist and counsellor to the Malatesta court at Rimini, Matteo de’ Pasti was commissioned by Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta to commemorate his beautiful third wife, Isotta. His medal shows her dressed in the French or Flemish style of the late Gothic period. The delicacy and balance of the design suggests the influence of Pisanello. The legend in Latin reads, ‘To Isotta of Rimini, the ornament of Italy for beauty and virtue’.
Isotta Atti was the famously beautiful mistress, and eventually third wife, of Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini. The elephant depicted on the reverse was a heraldic symbol of the Malatesta, proclaiming fortitude. Here it promotes her link to the family. The year 1446, inscribed in Roman numerals, commemorates not the date of the medal itself, but a significant year in which Sigismondo consolidated his political power and Isotta became his mistress. As a way of ensuring that her fame (and his) endured posthumously, he buried medals of them both in the walls and foundations of the many buildings he commissioned, in self-conscious imitation of the classical tradition of using Roman coins as foundation deposits; as such, many examples of this medal survive.