Watch List notes:

*Italy, Carmagnola, Ludovico II di Saluzzo (1475-1504) and Margarita de Foix, 10 scudi d'oro, 1503, lvdovicvs marchio et margarita d fois m s, confronting busts of Ludovico, wearing a hat and the collar of the Order of St. Michael, and Margarita wearing a veil; below, 1503, rev., si devs pro nobis qvis contra nos – followed by j and jc monogram, shield of Saluzzo and Foix superimposed on crowned eagle with spread wings, 43.5mm, 34.33g (CNI II, 135, this piece; Ravegnani Morosini 13, this piece; Bellesia 1, this piece noted; Forrer, BDM I, 442, this piece noted; Armand II, 122, 13; MIR 134; F. 157), some edge smoothing and with a few scratches, some double striking, very fine to extremely fine and of the highest rarity. Ex collection of the Teutonic Order, Vienna; ex Prince Montenuovo collection, Vienna; ex Cav. Giancarlo Rossi collection, Dura & Sambon auction, Rome, 6 December 1880, lot 771; ex Alfred Morrison collection, Christie's, 23 July 1965, lot 60; and ex Christie's, 23 November 1971, lot 90. Details of the coin collection of the Teutonic Order (the Deutscher Orden) can be found in Des Hohen Deutschen Ritterordens Münz-Sammlung in Wien (Vienna, 1858) by Dr. B. Dudik who devoted the first chapter (pp. 1-16) to its background. Wide ranging in its scope, in the late 18th century it seems that it was decided to concentrate the collection only on coins that related directly to the Order and in August 1843 Dudik noted that 999 coins (205 in gold, 724 in silver and 70 in copper) were sold to the Viennese coin dealer Anton Promber. While it has not been possible to locate a precise listing of the coins sold in this transaction it is possible that the present coin formed part of this group. If this was the case it was presumably Promber who sold the coin to Prince Montenuovo, the celebrated Viennese coin collector from whom it passed into the equally celebrated Rossi collection of Italian coins in Rome. At the Rossi sale it was described as unique and realised the second highest price in the auction – 2,300 gold lire. Thereafter its whereabouts seems to have been lost until it appeared for sale at Christie's in 1965 as part of the renowned collection of Alfred Morrison of Fonthill House, Wiltshire. In the sale catalogue no mention of its earlier provenance to Rossi etc. was made and it was described as "cast and chased, very fine and very rare". Under these circumstances it remained unsold and was subsequently offered for sale, unillustrated, in the Christie's 1971 auction where it was purchased by Alan Thomas, the London book seller and antiquarian, now deceased. Alfred Morrison (1821-97) was a major collector of paintings, works of art, manuscripts and autographs as well as coins and medals. He inherited a large fortune from his millionaire father James Morrison (1790-1857) who was a textile merchant, Member of Parliament and early investor in railways on the Continent and in America. Alfred Morrison's residencies were at Fonthill House, Wiltshire and at Carlton House Terrace in London and he was High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1857. His numismatic collection was exceptional with Christie's staging a single auction devoted to 98 important European gold coins and medals, from which the present piece emanates. A second sale on 1 March 1966 was mainly devoted to European medals in silver and bronze and both sales were held on the instructions of his grandson, Lord Margadale of Islay, T.D. Some confusion arose after the Rossi sale of 1880 when Leonard Forrer wrote an article in Spink's Numismatic Circular of November 1897 entitled "A 10 Zecchini Piece of Louis II, Marquis of Saluzzo, and his Consort, Marguerite de Foix, dated 1503". The article announced the discovery of a second example of the coin in gold, comparing it to the Rossi coin but, uncharacteristically for Forrer, it contained a number of errors (by coincidence the article appeared one month before the death of Alfred Morrison in December 1897, at the age of 76). Firstly, Forrer stated that the Rossi coin was bought at the 1880 sale for the Royal collection in Turin (but this was not the case and no gold coin of this type exists in Turin). Secondly, he gave the weight of his new coin as 41g but this would indicate a coin to the weight of 12 zecchini not 10, or more correctly 12 scudi d'oro. Thirdly, he misread the end of the reverse legend as an n rather than a j followed by a jc monogram. Forrer returned to the subject in his Biographical Dictionary of Medallists (vol. 1, London, 1904, p. 442). As regards this so-called second example, G.F. Hill in A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini (London, 1930) stated in a footnote to medal no. 711 on page 181, where he regards the issue as a coin and not a medal, that "the gold piece.....weighs 40.93g, and appears to me to be a cast" (Hill mistakenly thought the heavier coin was ex Montenuovo but went on to mention three English collectors who owned it). The current whereabouts of this heavier coin, said by Hill to be a cast, is unknown. The present coin is struck from the same dies as an example in silver in the Numismatica Ars Classica auction (Asta 85) of the Ravegnani Morosini collection, 24th May 2015, lot 11. On the obverse the same die flaw beneath the d of d fois appears clearly on both coins. However, one alteration has been made on the obverse die between the striking of the silver coin and the present gold coin in that the stop appearing between the m and the s on the silver coin has been altered to a rosette on the gold version. This would tend to indicate that the gold coin was struck after the silver one and yet the freshness of the reverse die suggests that it was not struck very much later. Much has been written about the significance of the letters at the end of the reverse legend which appear as a j followed by a jc monogram and they have been interpreted as the initials of the die engraver. These same letters appear on the reverse of the rare silver talleros of 1516 featuring the bust of Margarita de Foix in a widow's veil (Hill 711; CNI II, p. 71, 1; Ravegnani Morosini p. 107, 1). Armand in 1883 (vol. III, 204, c) suggested a German medallist so the initials would stand for Januae Johannes Clot ("John Clot of Genoa") who evidently worked briefly at the mint in Genoa in the early 16th century. This attribution was followed by Forrer in 1904 (BDM I, 442). Others however have linked the initials to members of the da Clivate family who were involved with the Carmagnola mint, with Revegnani Morosini and, more recently, Travaini and Prokisch (Quaderni Ticinesi di Numismatica e Antichità Classische XXXIX, 2010, pp. 414-15 and pl. II, 7a) suggesting that the die engraver was Gianluca da Clivate, the brother of Francesco who was master of the mint at Carmagnola at the time of Ludovico's death in 1504 and again in 1510. For other overviews on the subject see Scher in Currency of Fame, p. 116 and the forthcoming volume 12 of Medieval European Coinage, chapter 3, section (s). If indeed the reverse die is engraved by Gianluca da Clivate one wonders whether the obverse die is also by him or by a different artist because the style between the two sides of the coin is markedly different. In particular the lettering on the obverse has a somewhat squat appearance compared to the more elegant style found on the reverse where the letters fill the gap perfectly between the inner and outer borders in a way that is hardly the case on the obverse. The letter a on the obverse appears flat-topped whereas on the reverse it is engraved with a pointed top. CNI listed ten varieties of the silver version of this issue, the so-called tallero of 40 grossi (CNI 135-145; Ravegnani Morosini 14-15), two of which are undated . The undated ones lack the engraver's initials and substitute fvxo for fois in the obverse legend. On close examination of fois on the present coin it can be clearly observed that the o is engraved over a v on the die, as if the engraver had a change of heart or was corrected at the last moment. Of the silver coins it is worth noting that while some are struck others are known as casts (as is the case with the examples in Vienna and in the Bargello, Florence).

Estimate: £50,000 - 100000