This wooden medallion was almost certainly used as a games-piece. The depth of the turned wood border would protect the gesso portrait within during use. Games of skill such as chess and draughts with their chivalric and military associations had deep roots in patrician leisure, and Luxury boards and games-pieces became common possesions amongst the elite of Renaissance Europe.
The top face of the games-piece is decorated with a portrait of Margarete von Frundsberg a member of a German noble family.
This portarit is based on a medal by Friedrich Hagenauer dated 1529; other versions of this subject can be found in the Rijksmuseum. and in the Bayerisches nationalmuseum in Munich.
Hagenauer (1490-1500) was a German wood-carver and medallist. In accordance with his training as a wood-carver he prepared his models in boxwood or pearwood and then cast them in silver, bronze or lead. Hagenauer was active throughout the whole South German area and the Lower Rhine (main work output from the cities: Augsburg, Baden, Swabia, Bonn, Cologne, Munich). His models are very accurate and precise, and exact in the smallest detail. His patrons were fascinated by his models and treasured them as works of art, framed them and sometimes even coloured them. This is the reason also why so many have survived.