The Freedman Piakos

Sale: Triton XIII, Lot: 50. Estimate $4000.  Closing Date: Monday, 4 January 2010.  Sold For $4000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

SICILY, Piakos. Circa 425-420 BC. Æ Hemilitron (4.95 g, 11h). Dies by the ‘Maestro della foglia’. Laureate head of river god left, wearing laurel wreath; before, six pellets interspersed by Π-I-A-K-I-Ω-N (barely visible) / Dog right, attacking stag crouching right; acorn to left, oak leaf to right. Jenkins, Coinages p. 92; CNS 1; Rizzo pl. LX, 13 (same dies); Basel 396; SNG Morcom -; SNG ANS -; BMC 1; Laffaille 198; Virzi 1344. EF, glossy green and black patina, a few small rough spots. Very rare and among the finest known.

Ex David Freedman Collection (Triton V, 15 January 2002), lot 219.

Jenkins cited only three examples of this rare issue and identified a site 8 km southwest of Mendolito, between Aitna and Adranon, as the location of the ancient city of Piakos. The similarity and refinement of style with the celebrated maestro della foglia Apollo-head issues of Katane (cf. SNG ANS 1254-6), which depict the Olympian as a mature young man with a sullen expression, led to the speculation by Rizzo, with which Jenkins concurred, that the same ‘artist of the leaf’ was responsible for both issues. This stylistic link provides the only chronological evidence for this issue.