Last Sunday I was visting a museum and I saw this picture : The Vocation of Saint Matthew, by Hendrick Ter Brugghen, c. 1620. He was a Dutch painter who was born at The Hague in 1588 and died in Utrecht in 1629. On the table we can see large silver and gold coins. I could identify the silver coins, they are Rijksdaalders minted in Utrecht, 1620 : large silver coins, 41 mm. But I cannot identify the gold coins. They must have a module of c.32-35 mm.
"Coins in art" has potential to be an interesting thread I would guess the coins are gold guilders like this one: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces102094.html Dutch gold crowns like this one: https://en.numista.com/catalogue/pieces318331.html or écu d'or au soleil like this one: https://www.biddr.com/auctions/elsen/browse?a=3310&l=3778652 They have a smaller diameter than 32-35mm, however. They are typically 25-28mm, but take into account that the painter needs to create dept of field in the painting, so the size of the gold coins may be exaggerated in order to do this. Our recident gold expert @panzerman should probably take a look here.
I guess the atmosphere in this painting is more recognizable than the coin in it: Vilhelm Hammershøi; "The coin collector", 1904. The National Museum of Art, Oslo, Norway
Roman coins of the 1st c. AD as the Romans could see them : Pompeii, house of Julia Felix. Left : a pile of denarii and aurei Middle : a purse full of other coins Right : a pile of bronze coins (orichalcum and brass).
Apparently the artist wanted to picture a collector, not a modern day hoarder... https://coinsweekly.com/the-nine-types-of-coin-collectors/
Wait a minute... I just found there was already a thread on coins in art, started in January AD 2019 by @willieboyd2 . Another member, @spirityoda , contributed with some pictures, among which this one: Marinus van Reymerswale, Money changer and his wife, 1540 (Prado Museum, Madrid) Let's have a closer look to the pile of coins : I would like to get the best possible definition, the artist painted each coin with so many details... Here are the 3 front gold coins, plus the smaller silver coin on the extreme right. I'm sure it is possible to precisely identify these coins...
I am almost the only one to post in this tread I myself started but I like that too mutch. Please excuse me. There was another extremely interesting picture posted in a similar 2019 thread by @willieboyd2 (Hi ! thanks for doing it!). It was about a 15th c. Flemish panel : Hans Memling, Man with a Roman coin, wooden panel, 23 x 31 cm (that's a little more than an A4 sheet), c. 1470s. Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. In Belgium Walloons use the expression "Flemish Primitives" as an example of redundancy. Hans Memling was one of these Northern Renaissance painters we today call Flemish Primitives. This portrait represents some unknown individual. From his clothing, specialists think he might be Italian or of Italian descent, and that the Roman coin, the leaves at the bottom of the picture and the palm tree in the background must be symbols suggesting his name or emblem. The coin is a sestertius of Nero, and is particularly well represented with a lot of details (don't forget the whole picture is the size of an A4 sheet of paper!), a remarkable example of numismatic realism. The portrait style even suggests it is a sestertius minted at Lyons, though there is no tiny globe under it. But the legend is grossly blundered : NERO CLAVD CAESAR AVG GE P M TR P IMP P P. It should be GER and not just GE, and I think there is no known obverse die with GE(rmanicus)...(@curtislclay, if you see this post, could you confirm?). It is possible Hans Memling did it on purpose. These 15th c. Flemish painters liked to put puzzles and enigmas in their pictures. The Spanish writer Arturo Perez Reverte made it the plot of one of his most famous thrillers, The Flanders Panel (La tabla de Flandes, 1990). Who is this man? Why is he holding a sestertius of Nero? What is the meaning of those leaves at the bottom of the picture - and what kind of leaves? Ivy? Do the palm-tree, the three swans, the horseman riding by the water, the winding road to a castle on top of a hill have a special signification? And what about the stork? Yes, look carefully just under the cloud in the top left corner of the panel, there is a flying stork : ... and what does that GE signify?...
