Art medals are a well-known and highly collected form of small bronze sculpture, and are considered a form of exonumia.

Art medals have been produced since the late Renaissance period, and the category was basically invented by Pisanello, who cast them like bronze sculptures, rather than minting them like coins.

Art medals may take such recognized forms as competition "medals" or "awards" for various accomplishments, but are more typically recognized by: (1) their memorialization of a particular place, event, or person (say, portrait medals of Cesare Borgia); (2) the casting process that produced the medal; and (3) the hand of an individual artist at work.

[Last contributor : Askari Mark , Content under LGPL licence]