Numisma LXXVII

Title

Numisma LXXVII

Description

Description of the Numismatic, on reverse allegoric representation

ca. 1722

Artist

Gand

Historical Description

Numismatics "the lawful, the valid, the coin", is also called coinage. It is the scientific study of money and its history. The first attempts to deal scientifically with coins date back to the 14th and 15th centuries. From this time we know, for example, the poet Petrarch and the Bishop Stephan of Neidenburg, each of whom had an extensive collection of historical coins or, as it was called at the time, "coins of all countries". In Germany, the aspiring sovereigns were among the first important coin collectors. Thus, large coin cabinets such as the State Coin Collection in Munich, the Coin Cabinet of the Art Collections in Dresden, the Coin Cabinet of the Württemberg State Museum and the Berlin Coin Cabinet trace their core back to such princely collections. In Austria, a coin collection was part of the Habsburg emperors' Kunstkammer as early as the 16th century. Alongside London, Paris, St. Petersburg and New York, the Coin Cabinet of the National Museums in Berlin (Prussian Cultural Heritage) and the Coin Cabinet of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna are among the most important coin collections in the world. In Switzerland, there is no collection of comparable size, but there is a large density of medium-sized and smaller coin cabinets.