Menander (ca160-140 BC) is one of the best known Indo-Greek kings who ruled over a territory containing Bactria upto northern India. Meander issued a series of silver drachms in the Hellenistic style which are not really rare are still quite affordable. On the obverse these coins show a portrait of the king, either bare-headed, with helmet, or holding a spear. The reverse shows a depiction of Athena holding shield and thunderbolt. When i encountered this coin on vcoins i normally would have passed is. It was fairly expensive for the type and quality, and i already own several of these. However a small detail caught my i which gives some insight in the minting process of these coins 2000 years ago. Mainly for that reason i bought it. On the obverse is a circular legend in Greek: Basileos Soteros Menandrou. On the reverse the equivalent in the local Kharosti script. However, between the kharosti characters are some dots which are not supposed to be there. Looking better there are two concentric circles of fairly equally spaced dots between which the characters are placed. These dots protrude a bit from the surface of the coin and are easiest to see on the photo in the lower left quadrant. But they are all around. It seems very likely that these dots are the traces of the dotted guidelines for the text made by the die maker. I have seen similar design traces on Roman and Greek coins. This was the first time i encountered them on Indo-Greek coinage, so thought i'd share this.
very nice drachm THC. that is pretty cool, i never noticed the dots before. went looking around and found a few with them. so the die maker was just tracing out were the text was going to be so he didn't veer off course?
Ofcourse we can not be totally sure what the die makers did or thought. But i imagine first the guidelines were made by mintworker number 1. He gave it to number 2 who engraved the centre figure. On it went to number 3 to surround it with the legend. And then i see number three running back to number 2 shouting "You idiot, you didn't stay within your inner circle ! Now the middle letters of the kings name look like they have been shoved down below the feet of Athena !
wow THC, that's a very cool example ... super sweet addition *edit* Neat, that's very observant => those two circles of dots are quite interesting (I do the same kind of thing before I carve our pumpkin ... I quickly pencil-prick the rough design before I apply the knife!)
I have seen coins with overlapping parts and suspect this conversation was very close to real. I also suspect that some coins were rough cut by an apprentice and then passed to a master who would complete the fine details like the emperor's face without being required to do the tedious work like removing all the metal in the head. Did great painters paint every stroke or did they contract out background and sky work?
Apparently some did farm out the background work. For instance, this painting of emperor Theodosius (Art Institute of Chicago): Alessandro Magnasco Italian, 1667-1749 Theodosius Repulsed from the Church by Saint Ambrose 1700/10 Oil on canvas From the plaque: "In 390 Ambrose, the archbishop of Milan, refused to give communion to Emperor Theodosius (r. 379-95) until he made public penance for the massacre of thousands of innocents after an insurrection. Theodosius, the last emperor to command the entire Roman state, eventually submitted to the archbishop's greater moral authority. This painting typifies Alessandro Magnasco's fluid, highly charged mature manner. In keeping with the artistic traditions of his native Genoa, Magnasco dissolved the figures into ghostly forms. For the elaborate background edifice, which is intended to represent the atrium of an early Christian church, he employed an unidentified architectural painting specialist."
Also quite a lot of paintings from Dutch 17th century masters likely were a collaborative effort. If it is probable that the master made only a few brush strokes on a painting one sees these often attributed as "from the workshop of Vermeer" or fill in another name.
A handful of Canadian artistic-masters merely paint the 1's and 2's and then let the rest of the class finish the higher numbers ...
