Italian Coins featuring the Archer M. Huntington Collection

Triton XVII, Lot: 1068. Estimate $300. Sold for $380. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ITALY, Ancona. Republic. Circa 13th-14th century. AR Grosso (23mm, 2.37 g, 1h). + (star) DE ANCONA (star), cross pattée / · PP · S · QVI (star) · (trefoil) RIACVS · (rose), St. Judas Cyriacus (Quiriacus) standing facing, holding crozier and raising hand in benediction. CNI XIII 23; Biaggi 34. EF, toned.

From the depths of the Dark Ages, the city of Ancona on the northeast coast of Italy had honored a certain Judas Cyriacus as its patron saint. Local tradition claims that Cyriacus (or Quiriacus) was a Jew of Jerusalem who had a fateful meeting with the Roman empress Helena around 327 AD. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, was on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem when she encountered Cyriacus, who revealed to her the location of the True Cross upon which Christ was crucified. After guiding the empress to the holy relic, Cyriacus converted to Christianity and became Bishop of Jerusalem, only to suffer martyrdom years later under Julian the Apostate.The city of Ancona is said to have received his saintly relics, minus his head. This took place under another empress, Galla Placidia, around the middle of the fifth Century, and has been the city’s patron Saint ever since. His head still rests in a church in the town of Provins, France, compliments of Henry de Champagne, who brought it from Jerusalem during the crusades. The feast of Cyriacus is celebrated on May 4th.

Born 10 March 1870 in New York City, Archer Milton Huntington (original name, Archer Milton Worsham) was adopted by his mother's second husband, the railroad industrialist (and builder of the Central Pacific RR) Collis P. Huntington. Perhaps influenced by a trip with his step-father to Mexico City, and followed a few years later with his own trip to Spain, Archer Huntington began a life-long interest Spanish culture. In 1897, he published his own translation of the Castilian epic El Cid, and in 1898, his travel memoir, Note-Book in Northern Spain, was also published. In addition, he also began collecting everything related to the Iberian Peninsula: books and manuscripts, coins, paintings and sculpture, and artifacts. In 1904 he founded the Hispanic Society of America (HSA) and began the construction of Audobon Terrace, a series of Beaux Arts buildings which provided a home for the Hispanic Society of America (HSA) and its collections, as well as homes for the American Numismatic Society (ANS), which he joined in 1899; and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, of which he became a member in 1911; the American Geographical Society, and the Museum of the American Indian. As well as being a major benefactor of the Hispanic Society of America, the American Numismatic Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, by providing operating endowments, Huntington was closely involved with their operations. In the early 1920s, he funded the establishment of the Numismatic Notes and Monographs series, which provided important numismatists to publish some of their researches, and which was based on the HSA's Hispanic Notes and Monographs series. From 1905-1910, Huntington was president of the ANS; in 1910 Huntington was named Honorary President of the ANS, a position he held until his death on 11 December 1955. Huntington was also responsible for the creation of the Mariners' Museum in Newport News, VA, and the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress; he was also an inaugural board member of the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. Throughout his life, he maintained continued to pursue his collecting activities, adding new material to his already vast collections. Huntington's passion for combining collecting with scholarship was so great that he ran him afoul of the German Imperial Government in August 1914, when he was arrested as a spy, because of the large number of aeronautical maps of Europe he was carrying (Huntington was Chairman of the Map Committee of the Aero Club at the time).

It was, however, Huntington's collection of Spanish-related coinage that was particularly notable. Numbering almost 38,000 coins, Huntington worked to acquire an example of every single Spanish coin known from the beginning of coinage there to the present, as well as Spanish-controlled territories in Europe and overseas colonies. His goal was, in his words, "to condense the soul of Spain into meanings, through works of the hand and spirit." Because of Huntington's scholarly and artistic acumen, this collection became the most complete collection of Spanish-related coins outside of Spain ever in existence. It included a number of extremely rare and unique pieces, and showed the discerning eye for which Huntington was well-known. Many of these coins were purchased during Huntington's overseas travels as a member of the American Geographic Society. George Miles, in his The Coinage of the Umayyads of Spain summed it up best:

"[The Huntington Collection is] one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish coins that has ever been brought together. No phase of the numismatic history of Spain and related countries has been neglected."

The Spanish influence in Italy covered several centuries and here Huntington collected broadly. Milan, Napoli, Sardegna, and Sicilia were under the direct control of Spain. The Kingdom of Sicilia was the oldest of Aragon's Italian holdings since it was conquered from the French by Pero lo Gran in 1282 during the War of the Sicilian Vespers. In the fifteenth century, Aragon also gained control of the Kingdom of Napoli, which had broken away from the Kingdom of Sicilia during the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

Following the death of Francesco II Sforza in 1535, Carlos I claimed the duchy of Milan on behalf of his son, Filippo (the future Filippo II di Spagna), sparking the bitter Italian War of 1536-1538 between Carlos and Francis I of France. A resolution was reached between the two powers in the Treaty of Nice in 1538 with the duchy of Milan being firmly in Spanish hands.

The Kingdom of Aragon conquered Sardegna in 1324. Over the course of the next 150 years, the Aragonese, through warfare and outright purchase, secured control of the island. In 1479 when Ferdinand V of Castile succeeded his father as King of Aragon, the Kingdom of Sardegna passed to the Spanish crown where it remained until 1720, when it passed formally to the House of Savoy.

The inclusion of the gold Genovino of Simon Boccanegra may seem out of place here, since Spain never did control Genova. The surname, which in Spanish is spelled Bocanegra (lit. "black mouth" [i.e. an evil speaker]), was of Italian origin and could be traced to the thirteenth century Dracosia Boccanegra, a soothsayer who employed the dark arts. Genova was also the birthplace of Cristoforo Colombo who, in 1492, discovered the New World, thereby setting Spain on the path to developing its empire in the Americas.

The following Italian coin lots are from the Huntington Collection: 1074, 1081–1103, 1105–30, 1132–4, 1136–57, 1159–1228, 1230–3, 1235–8, 1250, 1251, 1253, 1254, 1289–96, 1300–02, 1305–18, and 1320.

A further 75 selections of Italian Coinage from the Huntington Collection will be available in Electronic Auction 318, running concurrently with this sale, opening 18 December 2013 and closing on 15 January 2014, on our website: www.cngcoins.com.