Baldwin & Sons
Auction 81 10 May 2013
View prices realized
► Sale information
Find similar lots
COMMEMORATIVE MEDALS. BRITISH MEDALS. Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1647-1702), uniface Copper Portrait Medal, c.1667, by John Roettier, bust left, loosely draped, her hair drawn up and with plain diadem, 70mm (MI 541/195; pl LV, 1; Nau 42; Spink Auction 8, 27 February 1980, lot 444). Good very fine, some rust marks in field and die flaw by the bridge of her nose, slight edge knock at 2 o'clock, extremely rare.
The die for this medal, from which no specimens were struck in the 17th century, was one of a number of Roettier family dies sold by a Mr Cox to the coin dealer and jeweller Matthew Young, of Ludgate Hill (London), in 1828. Young was to give all of the dies to the British Museum in 1829 and only a very few specimens were struck. Frances Stuart was a notable beauty at the court of Charles II and was married in March 1667. Roettier worked on medallic portraits of two further beauties, all unfinished, but this was to be used by him, in a reduced size, as the model for Britannia on the medal for the Peace of Breda (MI 535/185-186). Whilst the diarist John Evelyn was to write of "the fair Mrs. Stuart", Samuel Pepys, 25 February 1667, wrote of the Breda medal "where in little is Mrs. Stewart's face, as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think; and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by".
Estimate: £400-600
The die for this medal, from which no specimens were struck in the 17th century, was one of a number of Roettier family dies sold by a Mr Cox to the coin dealer and jeweller Matthew Young, of Ludgate Hill (London), in 1828. Young was to give all of the dies to the British Museum in 1829 and only a very few specimens were struck. Frances Stuart was a notable beauty at the court of Charles II and was married in March 1667. Roettier worked on medallic portraits of two further beauties, all unfinished, but this was to be used by him, in a reduced size, as the model for Britannia on the medal for the Peace of Breda (MI 535/185-186). Whilst the diarist John Evelyn was to write of "the fair Mrs. Stuart", Samuel Pepys, 25 February 1667, wrote of the Breda medal "where in little is Mrs. Stewart's face, as well done as ever I saw anything in my whole life, I think; and a pretty thing it is that he should choose her face to represent Britannia by".
Estimate: £400-600