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Lot 377
*Bahamas, Bahamas Government, 1965 Issue, a complete set of 8 issued notes all with matching serial numbers A000085, comprising $0.50, $1, $3, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, each with two signatures (of Sir Stafford Sands as Minister of Finance and of George Higgs as Commissioner of Currency), multi-coloured with pictorial reverses depicting Bahamian life, printed by de la Rue (Pick 17-25), uncirculated, a most attractive and very rare set of issued notes. From a small number of such sets known to have been made up by hand in Nassau in 1966, when the notes were first issued. This was done on the instructions of Sir Stafford Sands, the Minister of Finance, whose signature is featured on the notes.
Lot 384
*Charles I, Tower mint, unite, group d, m.m. anchor (with flukes to left on obverse), bust 6 left, with crown of class II, reads ma br fr et hi, rev., oval crowned shield with crowned c r at sides, 9.04g (cf SCBI Brooker 100, from different dies and anchor with flukes to right; N. 2148; S. 2687), cleaned, very fine or rather better. Apparently rare with the anchor mintmark having flukes to the left. A comparable specimen from different dies is in the British Museum collection.
Lot 468
Victoria, sovereigns (9), miscellaneous varieties: 1853 with blundered 5’s, appears as 1833 (2), 1853 with blundered and illegible 5 (1), 1854 with filled in 4 (1), 1854 double struck C (1), 1855 double struck second figure 5’s (2), 1857 unbarred first a in gratia, 1858 blundered and incomplete 8 (1), fine to about very fine, some rare (9)
Lot 475
*Victoria, sovereign, 1859 ‘Ansell’, small date with normal 5, var. with both a’s of gratia imperfectly barred (cf S. 3852E; M. 42A), good fine and lightly toned, very rare. It appears that at least three obverse dies were marked by Ansell during his experiments, one of which became flawed while this last - with small date, normal 5 and irregular a’s in gratia - seems to be the rarest.
Lot 496
Victoria, sovereigns (11), miscellaneous varieties: 1860 flawed a in regina, 1860 inverted a for v in in victoria, 1860 e over indeterminate letter in dei, 1861 blundered f in fid, 1861 e over partial e or other indeterminate letter (2), 1861 double-struck a in gratia, 1861 blundered 1’s in date, 1862 filled in second a in britanniarum, 1863 blundered partial o in victoria, 1866 possible 6 over 5 in date, fine to very fine or better, some rare (11)
Lot 58
*Gaspare Mola (1567-1640), Cosimo II de’ Medici, 4th Grand Duke of Tuscany (1609-21), lead medal, 1610, young bust right, rev., Grand Ducal coronet and sceptre with the Medici balls, 40mm (cf. Pollard Bargello 461 = Vannel & Toderi 64-65 in gold), pierced, very fine and rare [Clifford lot 92]. The reverse design is copied from an earlier Medici medal by Michele Mazzafirri. Mola’s head of the young Cosimo influenced the portrait medal by Dupré of 1613 and, later on, Selvi’s version from the Medici series made in the 18th century.
Lot 71
*Antonio Selvi (1679-1753), John Molesworth (1679-1726), British diplomat and ambassador in Florence, later second Viscount Molesworth, bronze medal, 1712, draped bust right, rev., Prudence, Abundance, Peace and Commerce standing around an altar decorated with the Molesworth arms; signed below a. selvi. f, 91.5mm (VT 132; MI 390/244; Eimer 452; Avery, The Medal, Spring 1994, fig. 10), very fine and rare [Clifford lot 315]. Ex Christie’s, 6 March 1990, lot 663. Of Anglo-Irish descent, John Molesworth’s diplomatic career also took him to Sardinia, Venice and Switzerland. He was succeeded as viscount by his younger brother Richard Molesworth of whom Selvi also made a medal.
Lot 715
*Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots (1542-67), portrait testoon, 1553, type I, first period (1542-58), before marriage to the Dauphin François (II), crowned bust right, rev., da pacem domine 1553, crowned shield flanked by cinquefoils, 4.84g (S. 5401; St. 166; Burns I, fig. 780; Richardson 1), flan split and creased, otherwise about very fine and very rare. Ex Spink, 26 September 2012, lot 620. See also the portrait medal included in this sale, lot 111.
Lot 72
*Antonio Selvi (1679-1753), Sir Thomas Dereham (1674-1739), bronze medal, 1715 or 1719, bust right, aged 36, rev., Virtue resting her arm on an angel and turning her back on Fortune, 85.5mm (VT 143 [86.5mm]; MI, 447/54), some weakness in the cast, very fine and rare [Clifford lot 316]. Thomas Dereham of Norfolk was brought up in Tuscany. He embraced the Catholic faith and endowed the College for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome with a grant for two students to be sent as missionaries to England.
Lot 73
*Antonio Selvi (1679-1753), Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676-1753), celebrated archaeologist and numismatist, bronze medal, 1715, bust right, rev., per ardva, Bellona catching the arm of Fortune, 86mm (VT 146 [89mm]; MI 434/32; Eimer 474 var.), cast from a pierced example, extremely fine with dark patina, rare [ex Clifford collection]. Fountaine succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Master of the Mint in 1727. He visited Florence twice in 1701 and 1715 where he was befriended by Cosimo III and to whom he evidently presented a gold medal of John VIII Palaeologus by Pisanello. The reverse of the present medal is also found on a Selvi medal of Richard Molesworth.
Lot 74
*Antonio Selvi (1679-1753), Alamanno Tommaso Pazzi (1647-1735), bronze medal (1735), bust right, aged 88, rev., the famous Scoppio del Carro carriage decorated with the Pazzi arms; signed below, a.s.f, 87.3mm (VT 190; Rizzini 1174), very fine and rare [ex Clifford collection]. The medal names Pazzi as a Senator of Florence and Prior of Urbino and was cast in the year of his death, 1735. The reverse relates to the famous annual ceremony in the Piazza Duomo, Florence when fireworks are exploded on the Pazzi carriage on Easter Sunday set off by a mechanical dove that flies down a wire from the high altar of the Duomo. The spectacular ceremony continues to this day.
Lot 78
*Anonymous, Dominico Lazzarini (1668-1734), professor of classics at the university of Padua from 1711 and founder member of the Accademia dell’ Arcadia, bronze medal, bust right, rev., allegorical figure with scholastic emblems at the temple of Honos, 89.5mm (Johnson III, 678), some light scratches, high relief, extremely fine and rare [ex Clifford collection]
Lot 79
*School of Paris, Heraclius, Byzantine Emperor (610-641), The Return of the True Cross to Jerusalem, silver repoussé impression after the famous gold medal once in the possession of Jean, Duc de Berry (1340-1416), Heraclius in a covered triumphal car drawn by three horses, holding the True Cross; at the far side of the horses is a diminutive figure holding a whip and turning back towards the emperor; four lamps hang from a rail above them; Latin and Greek inscriptions above and below and in five lines across field, 102mm and 97mm excluding the outer rim (Jones, BMC, 5-7, especially 6 (e) for the silver double-sided repoussé piece in Paris illustrated by Babelon, La Médaille et Les Médailleurs, 1927, pl. III; Arm. II, 8, 6; Kress 525 = Pollard II, 598; Scher in Currency of Fame, pp. 32-37; Syson & Gordon, Pisanello, 20, 3.29), an extremely fine image, small French import mark of “cygne” near top edge and small section of outer order missing at 12 o’clock, extremely rare as a silver repoussé version, thought to be the earliest type of copy made after the no-longer-existing original in the Duc de Berry’s collection [Clifford lot 422, see also inside front cover illustration including frame]. The following note borrows in part from the footnote written in the 1996 Clifford sale catalogue. Of the two large gold medals of Constantine and Heraclius recorded in the inventory of the collections of Jean Duc de Berry, the Constantine medal was purchased from a Florentine merchant Antonio Mancini on 2 November 1402 and it has generally been assumed that the Heraclius medal came from the same source. It is from these two pieces or indeed copies of them that were commissioned by the Duke himself that all later versions seem to be derived. The earliest known versions consist of silver repoussé plates joined at their rims (for which see Jones, BMC, 1 and 6 – and the present piece). The solid casts mainly in bronze are thought to be later. The original of the Heraclius medal was in gold and was evidently in the French Royal cabinet, stolen and melted down in 1831 (see Jones, BMC, I, p. 26, note 15). The original medals probably date from 1400-1402 when Manuel II Palaeologus visited Paris since the legends on both medals show a knowledge of the Byzantine chancery formulae in use at the time. Also the features of the emperors on both medals do not conform to the traditional iconography of either Constantine or Heraclius, but rather show a marked similarity to Manuel II himself (for portraits of Manuel II see Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, MS Suppl. Gr. 309; Herrin, J, Byzantium,The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, London, 2008, fig. 40). The medals were almost certainly produced in Paris, possibly with the Duke in mind as a purchaser. It may not be a coincidence that in March 1402 the Duke purchased two other “antique” medals of Augustus and Tiberius, from another Florentine merchant established in Paris, Michele de’ Pazzi. It has been suggested that they may be the work of the Parisian artist Michelet Saulmon, who is mentioned as the maker of a gold jewel in the Duke’s final inventory of 1416. Pieces from the Duke’s collections were available to other artists, and the imagery of both medals clearly influenced the work of the Limbourg brothers. Both obverse images appear in the Trés Riches Heures of c. 1411-16 and the triumphal chariot of the present medal is represented as the chariot of the sun at the top of each of the illuminations showing the twelve months of the year. In the Belles Heures the illumination showing the triumphal return of Heraclius after recovering the True Cross from the Persians is in fact a faithful copy of the imagery on the present piece (see Tim B. Husband and Margaret Lawson, The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean, Duc de Berry, New York, 2009, folio 156r). And, as Syson and Gordon (op. cit) among others have noted, there can be little doubt that Pisanello himself knew of and was influenced by these medals of Constantine and Heraclius. For the most recent comment on the iconography of the Return of the New Cross see Dr. Robin O’Bryan’s article, “Pisanello, chivalric dwarfs and the princely condottiere medal” in The Medal 66, 2015, pp. 13-25. She identifies the diminutive figure leading the horses as a chivalric dwarf of a type found later on medals by Pisanello and others. However, her view that the scene is likely to represent the emperor’s triumphal entry into Constantinople rather than Jerusalem as recorded in the 12th century trouvère Gautier d’Arras’s Eracle seems untenable given that the Belles Heures itself identifies the scene as Heraclius bringing the True Cross to Jerusalem. Stephen Scher in Currency of Fame has written that Heraclius with the True Cross is about to enter Jerusalem according to the account of the 13th century Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend when an angel appears and rebukes him for riding in comfort where before him Christ had entered Jerusalem on a lowly ass. See also Scher’s entry no 323 in Byzantium – Faith and Power (1261-1557), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, exhibition catalogue, 2004 - “The story of these medals is extremely complex, however, and much that concerns their history, authorship and iconography remains obscure”. The present piece was bought by Timothy Clifford in Paris in the early 1970s. Aside from the complete silver repoussé example in Paris it appears to be the only other extant repoussé version (albeit one-sided), the others being solid casts. Of the companion Constantine medal, only two repoussé versions are recorded by Jones (BMC), one in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris and the other in the British Museum.
Lot 96
*Great Britain, Charles II, Peace of Breda, 1667, gold medal by John Roettiers, laureate and draped bust right, rev., favente deo, Britannia seated on the shore reviewing her fleet; in ex., britannia, 56.5mm (MI 535/185; MH 64; Eimer 241), abrasions in field and to rim, about extremely fine and extremely rare, in shagreen case. Ex Spink, 27 February 1980, lot 437, Glendining, 4 November 1992, lot 272 and Spink, 9 July 1997, lot 439. As is well known, the figure of Britannia on coins and medals was modelled on the king’s favourite, Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox. On 25 February 1667 Pepys wrote in his diary, “At my goldsmith’s did observe the King’s new medal, where in little there is Mrs. Stewart’s face as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think: and a pretty thing it is, that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by.”
Lot 98
*Great Britain, William III, Namur Retaken, 1695, silver medal by Jan Boskam, laureate bust right, rev., William on horseback riding over enemy in front of the military action, 59.5mm (MI 132/384; Eimer 365 var.), with edge knocks and other marks, trace of mount, otherwise about very fine and rare [Clifford lot 503]
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209761 item(s)/page