Modern Coin Forgeries

The article focuses on a coin die and on some counterfeit sesini, part of the numismatic collection of Count Nicolò Papadopoli, today in the Museo Correr in Venice. According to the information available, the objects were found on the Island of St. Paul in Lake Iseo. They probably denote a mint for counterfeiting coins datable to the end of the sixteenth-early seventeenth century and are part of the wider phenomenon of the falsification of Venetian sesino, which forced the Serenissima to interrupt its official mintage in 1603.

L’articolo illustra un conio e alcuni sesini contraffatti, parte della raccolta numismatica del Conte Nicolò Papadopoli, oggi al Museo Correr di Venezia. Secondo le poche notizie disponibili, gli oggetti furono rinvenuti sull’Isola di San Paolo nel lago d’Iseo. Probabilmente rivelano l’esistenza di una fabbrica di monete false della fine del XVI-inizi XVII secolo e rientrano nel fenomeno più ampio della falsificazione del sesino veneziano, che costrinse la Serenissima a dismettere questo nominale nel 1603.

Roville 1553a, f° 4r: "Car les spectateurs de ce théâtre non seulement délecteront leurs yeux, et ne les paîtront de vaine peinture: mais aussi rassasieront leurs esprits de la connaissance très digne des choses, et personnes, tellement que comme par un miroir verront en présente contemplation ceux qui des longtemps ne sont plus en vie, étant par ces oeuvres rappelés des basses ténèbres, en nouvelle lumière. Ils les regarderont présents par l'effigie, les entendront parlant par l'écriture, contempleront leurs hauts faits par l'histoire, et ramèneront les temps passés de toute mémoire d'homme, jusque à leur siècle présent". 8 Nothing in Orsini 1570. 9 See Le Digne 1601 (poem offered to Henri IV) or Vallemont 1706, 29 and 95 (dissertation dedicated to the Duke of Maine). 10 On the portrait of Alexander in Modern Times, see Schwarzenberg 1969, Gauthier 2008. 11 Patin 1672, 23: "Plurimos vidimus & eruditos quidem, qui cum Alexandri nomen in nummis legerent, statim Alexandri Magni ut praecipui istius nominis vultum coniiciebant, praesertim si facies decora & iuvenilis fuerit". 12 Painted for the count Nicolo Maffei of Verona, the portrait of Alexander the Great by Giulio Romano clearly reproduces the two sides of the Alexander staters. 13 On this misunderstanding by Charles Le Brun, see Leblond 1797, 617: "Le célèbre Lebrun, voulant enrichir ses belles compositions des Batailles d' Alexandre du portrait de ce prince, et se conformant à une tradition établie, avait cru devoir trouver ce portrait sur les médailles d'or dont il s'agit ; mais elles ne présentent réellement que la tête de Minerve, à laquelle cet habile artiste a donné un air plus mâle en l'adaptant à son sujet" and Encyclopaedia Britannica 1797, 29: "Minerva is very common on the coins of Alexander; and her bust has been mistaken by the celebrated painter Le Brun for the hero himself". 14 On this, see Grell & Michel 1988 (passim) and Cojannot-Le Blanc 2011. The coinages of Alexander the Great and the République des Médailles (16th-18th centuries)

Seventy-nine Greek and Roman Provincial coins of Mysia in the Archaeological Museum in Florence are presented together with an overview of the formation of this part of the collection, which goes back to the Medici family. The numismatic catalogue is introduced by a discussion of the 17 th-century archival sources and a section with remarks on some specimens.

The correspondence of the French consul Esprit-Marie Cousinéry with Joseph Eckhel and Domenico Sestini sheds light on the activity of Osman Bey, a coin forger living in Constantinople from 1779 to 1785. Thanks to detailed descriptions found in the letters, the author was able to identify seventeen tooled Greek and Roman Provincial coins kept in the coin cabinets in Munich (Staatliche Münzsammlung) and London (British Museum).