Nomos 20

Nerva, 96-98. Aureus (Gold, 17 mm, 7.73 g, 6 h), Rome, 97. IMP NERVA CAES AVG P M TR P COS III P P Laureate head of Nerva to right. Rev. CONCORDIA EXERCITVVM Clasped hands holding legionary eagle, set upon prow to left. BMC 27 and pl 1, 15 (this coin). BN 16. Calicó 958. Cohen 28. RIC² 15. Toned, with a beautiful and sharp portrait, and an exceptional pedigree of great interest. Marks and bangs, on both sides and on the edges, otherwise, extremely fine.

From an American collection, previously in the collection of a Continental who acquired it from Spink's in London on 11 July 1966, described as being... (£450, rare and ef), and as a duplicate from the British Museum, originally in the collection of the Duc de Blacas d'Aulps.

The original owners of this coin were two of the most formidable and distinguished of all the French collectors of the first half of the 19th century. Pierre-Louis Jean Casimir, Comte (Duc from 1821) de Blacas d'Aulps (1771-1839) was a supporter of the Ancien Régime in France, and became a close advisor of the Comte de Provence, later Louis XVIII. Due to his conservative views he was exiled as the Bourbon ambassador to Rome following Waterloo; his aesthetic bent made his sojourn in Italy a great pleasure. He acquired all manner of antiquities, was a patron of the young painter Ingres, and helped with the excavation of the Forum. Back in France under Charles X he was a supporter of Champollion and helped create the Egyptian collection of the Louvre. At his death in 1839 he was succeeded as the 2nd Duc de Blacas by his son Louis Charles Pierre Casimir (1815-1866), who became an even more passionate collector than his father. He was a great coin collector and even translated Mommsen's "Geschichte des Römischen Münzwesens" into French (not surprisingly his French version is the more readable!). It is quite likely that this coin was acquired by the 2nd Duc. In any case, after his death in Venice he was first succeeded by his eldest son Casimir, who died of typhus five months later, to be succeeded, in turn by Pierre (Duc 1866-1937). Pierre de Blacas was very much uninterested in his father's and grandfather's collection, and so, very patriotically, offered to sell it to France. The French, however, were too cheap to buy it (!) so Charles Thomas Newton of the British Museum promptly managed to convince the British government to snap it up for the price of FF 1,200,000 (= £48,000) that Pierre de Blacas asked. It has been one of the true glories of the BM ever since; the French have, apparently never forgotten its loss.