Description
Winner of the 2017 Numismatic Literary Guild Best Book about World Coins award Handsomely bound in red leather, MS Typ 411 is one of thousands of rare editions, manuscripts, and documents in that library's Printing and Graphic Arts section, formerly called the Typography Department. Resembling an old fashioned family Bible at 10 × 8 inches and some 300 pages, when opened this book reveals no text but a series of fine pen-and-ink drawings, 1,220 illustrations of ancient coins. These are the records of a coin collection owned by Andrea Loredan, a Venetian patrician well known in the 1550s and 60s as a passionate connoisseur of antiquities. Silver tetradrachmas of Athens and Alexander the Great, aurei of Philip and Augustus, denarii of Caesar and his assassins, large Imperial sestertii of Nero and Hadrian, the numismatic images were intended to delight the eye, stir the curiosity, and enflame the acquisitive instincts of prospective buyers, at a time when the cash-strapped patrician was s
