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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kaparthy, post: 1802556, member: 57463&quot;]It is a medieval penny (denier) from the County of Blois in modern France. I do not own the coin. I found the image while buying coins from medieval Champagne for an article I was writing about the Great Fairs.&nbsp; I recognized the style immediately.</p><p><br /></p><p>If you look at <b>ancient Celtic</b> coins, you will see what numismatists have called &quot;degraded&quot; styles or &quot;abstract&quot; styles.&nbsp; Some coin folk today call them &quot;Picasso-like.&quot;&nbsp; About 15 years ago, Geraldine Chimirri-Russell was given duties for the coin cabinet in addition to other work at the University of Calgary Nickle Arts Museum.&nbsp; Not a numismatist, she was just looking over her inventory and turned one of those ancient Celts obliquely and <b>three-dimensional image</b> jumped out at her.&nbsp; About five years of patient research finally brought her to start publishing and speaking at conferences.&nbsp; She has found similar examples across other cultures.&nbsp; I was startled to see that the ancient Celtic tradition had continued at least in one place in medieval France. The gap is a thousand years.</p><p><br /></p><p>We learn to see images (especially coins)&nbsp; front-on. This was a Renaissance invention and like movable type, it came to dominate our culture.&nbsp; We no longer view obliquely.</p><p><br /></p><p>On these ancient coins Chimirri-Russell has found many human faces, but also several monsters or other scenes so disturbing that she refuses to discuss them.&nbsp; Not all &quot;abstract&quot; Celtic coins reveal these images - or perhaps we have not found the proper orientation and view.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><a href="http://metamedia.stanford.edu/projects/SeeingThePast/324" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://metamedia.stanford.edu/projects/SeeingThePast/324" rel="nofollow">Original paper by Geraldine Chimirri-Russell archived at Metamedia Stanford online here</a>. (Scroll all the way down to the bottom to see images of rotated coins.)</b></p><p><br /></p><p>My overview of Geraldine Chimirri-Russell&#039;s work <b><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=49803.0;wap2" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=49803.0;wap2" rel="nofollow">on FORVM here.</a></b></p><p><a href="http://www.ancients.info/forums/showpost.php?p=16360&amp;postcount=2" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.ancients.info/forums/showpost.php?p=16360&amp;postcount=2" rel="nofollow">My comments in Ancients.Info here.</a> (Links to the Fitzwilliam Museum newsletter and the Congress in Madrid announcement are no longer active.)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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