Conveners
S95. COLLECTING, ROBBING AND FAKING
- Clive Stannard (Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick)
In 1831, a group of thieves entered the Cabinet des médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (then the Bibliothèque royale) and robbed an significant quantity of gold coins, medals and most of Childeric’s treasure. This was a severe loss to one of the richest collections in the world, which can still be felt nowadays: the series of Roman and Syracusan coins, medals of Louis XIV and...
Imitation Chinese knife and spade money and Japanese obans are dotted throughout many numismatic collections. The apex of East Asian imitations held in the Yale University Art Gallery’s Numismatic Department is a framed display of Tokugawa era coinage. These object types were not made for coin collectors or enthusiasts, but to satiate a growing Western, middle-class interest in arts of the...
The "impronte ex Vaticane" are one of the sources given by Francesco Gnecchi (1847-1919) in his work on Roman Medallions (1912). With these words Gnecchi referred to a series of casts of ancient coins that he viewed at the beginning of the 20th century. He assumed that they all reproduced ancient coins kept in the Vatican collection before 1798. Research carried out on a similar set of casts...
