List of medallists

A medallist (British English) or medalist (American English) is an artist who designs medals, plaquettes, badges, coins and similar small works in relief in metal. Art medals are a well-known and highly collected form of small bronze sculpture, most often in bronze, and are considered a form of exonumia. "Medalist/medallist" is confusingly the same word used in sport and other areas (but not usually in military contexts) for the winner of a medal as an award. Medallists very often also design, or produce the dies for coins as well. In modern times medallists are mostly primarily sculptors of larger works, but in the past the number of medals and coins produced were sufficient to allow specialists who spent most of their career producing them. Medallists are also often confusingly referred to as "engravers" in reference works, referring to the "engraving" of dies, although this is often in fact not the technique used; however many also worked in engraving the technique in printmaking.

Medal of the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos during his visit to Florence, by Pisanello (1438). This was the first portrait medal. The legend reads, in Greek: "John the Palaiologos, basileus and autokrator of the Romans".

Art medals have been produced since the late Renaissance period, and, after some classical precedents and Late Medieval revivals, the form was essentially invented by Pisanello, who is credited with the first portrait medal, which has remained a very popular type. He cast them like bronze sculptures, rather than minting them like coins.