Nearly 20 years in the past, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art led efforts to accumulate an Italian Renaissance roundel that dates again to about 1500. That try failed when the museum was outbid throughout an public sale in 2003.

The curator, James David Draper, was upset. He had described the work, a bronze aid attributed to Gian Marco Cavalli, as “the most thrilling Renaissance bronze to appear on the market in ages.”