Sale: Nomos 1, Lot: 191. Estimate CHF4750.  Closing Date: Tuesday, 5 May 2009.  Sold For CHF710. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SPAIN. Philip II. 1556-1598. Medal (Bronze, 66mm, 117.36 g 12), contemporary cast with remains of gilding, by Jacopo da Trezzo, 1555. PHILIPPVS.REX.PRIN HISP.ÆT.S.AN.XXVIII Bare-headed and armored bust of Philip II to right; below, IAC.TREZZO.F / 1555 Rev. IAM ILLVSTRABIT OMNIA Apollo driving the chariot of the sun flying over the sea and a rocky landscape. Kress 437. Lanna 691. Rare. A lovely medal with a fine portrait of Prince Philip of Spain, who was then twenty-eight years old. Holed for suspension, about extremely fine.

Ex Sotheby Zurich, 27 May 1974, 190.

Jacopo da Trezzo (c. 1514-1589), was a Milanese goldsmith and engraver who worked for the Habsburgs and was in Brussels with for Philip II when this medal was made (he went with the king to Spain in 1559). The reverse shows Philip II’s emblem, and the legend, ‘now he will illuminate all things.’ This medal seems to have been made as a pendant to the most famous of all of da Trezzo’s medals, that portraying the king’s wife, Mary Tudor (as Scher, Currency of Fame, 54).