Wonderful Lifelike Hadrian Medallion

Triton XVII, Lot: 688. Estimate $20000. Sold for $15000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

Hadrian. AD 117-138. Æ Framed Medallion (47mm, 78.3 g, 12h). Rome mint. Struck AD 123/4-128. HADRIANVS AVGVSTVS, bare head right / COS III in exergue, Cybele seated right in cart drawn by four lions to right. Gnecchi II, pp. 3-4, 5, pl. 38, 4 = Mittag, Römische, Hadr 39.2 (V39/R35); Banti 164 (same dies, but narrower frame); Cohen 284. VF, rough green patina, light cleaning marks. Magnificent high relief portrait. Extremely rare – only three cited in Mittag’s die study and only one other known to the author of this diameter and heavy weight (in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).

This piece is a testament to the employment of the finest engravers for the production of Roman medallion dies. The likeness of Hadrian, carefully modeled in high relief, posseses a level of plasticity rarely found on numismatic portraits.

The cult of Cybele was established at Rome during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), when a temple to the eastern deity, referred to by the Romans as Magna Mater (= “Great Mother”) and worshiped in the very “un–Roman” form of a baetyl, was instituted on the Palatine Hill. While she makes an appearance on a small number of issues of Republican denarii, Cybele’s debut on Imperial coinage does not occur until the striking of sestertii for Diva Faustina I with the legend MATRI DEVM SALVTARI (Toynbee, Roman Medallions, ANSNS 5 [1986], p. 209–210, note 20; BMCRE p. lxxxiii; for type see RIC III 1145). Thus these Hadrianic medallions, issued in either two or three different “modules” (see Mittag Hadr 39.1–3), of which ours belongs to the largest, mark the first appearance of Cybele on Imperial issues, whether medallic or monetary.