Tom Eden of Morton & Eden writes:

"I first became a collector by temperament and inclination; I then became a collector bychoice and through knowledge; I am now a collector through love and inner necessity."-John R. Gaines, Preface to the Sotheby's sale of his collection of drawings, 1986

Leon Battista Alberti's notion that "a man can do all things if he will" defines the essenceof the Renaissance man: one who is driven by curiosity, versatility and creativity. It isalso an apt description of John Gaines: a clear-eyed businessman, analytical geneticist,visionary, collector, and philanthropist who endowed the Gaines Center for theHumanities at the University of Kentucky, once served on the Trustees' Council of theNational Gallery of Art and has been inducted into the Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

Gaines held a somewhat unusual pair of university degrees; one in English, the other ingenetics: humanist and scientist. The latter informed his thinking and strategy as athoroughbred horse breeder, in which his successes were legendary. His vision forhorse racing was revolutionary and his creation in 1982 of the annual Breeder's Cup, hasbecome, as he hoped, the greatest horse-racing event in the world, where championsrace champions. And in designing the winner's trophy for the Breeder's Cup, JohnGaines, the humanist, revealed himself. For the model he chose the remarkable écorchébronze of a trotting horse by the Mannerist sculptor Giambologna.

As John Gaines himself admitted he was a dedicated, if not addicted collector, a self-professed "acolyte at the altar of beauty". During his long career as a collector, hefocused on the finest, whether it be a great ancient Roman bronze or sixteenth centurytapestries, and his crowning achievement must be his collection of Master Drawings,which included works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, D ürer, Rembrandt, Seurat, vanGogh and Picasso, to name a few. When sold in 1986 these works broughtunprecedented prices, and many ultimately found their way into important museumcollections.

Toward the end of his life, it was with the same passion that John Gaines begancollecting Renaissance medals and plaquettes. His focus, as ever, was on beauty notquantity. Shortly following his death, in 2005 Morton & Eden sold the first two portionsof his collection, for what were then record prices. A number of the highlights in thosesales entered the two other great collections of medals then being formed in the USA,those of Stephen K. Scher and Lawrence R. Stack, as well as the Mario Scaglia collectionin Italy, now in the Carrara Institute, Bergamo.

The contents of this sale represent the third and final portion of the John R. Gainescollection, which, in addition to a further group of mainly Italian medals and plaquettes,contains a particularly rich section of the works of Guillaume Dupré, as exemplified bythe cover illustration of this catalogue.

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