The Master of the Rhegium Apollo
Ex Eddé and Gillet Collections

Triton XXI, Lot: 327. Estimate $75000. Sold for $75000. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

BRUTTIUM, Rhegion. Circa 415/0-387 BC. AR Tetradrachm (22.5mm, 17.34 g, 2h). Dies by “the Master of the Rhegium Apollo”. Facing lion mask / Head of Apollo right, wearing laurel wreath; olive sprig to left, [PHΓIN]ON to right. Herzfelder 104 (D62/R89); HN Italy 2496; SNG Fitzwilliam 81 (same dies); Gillet 324 (this coin); Gulbenkian 146 (same dies); de Luynes 794 (same dies). Good VF, toned. Of the finest style in the series.

Ex Michel Eddé Collection; The Numismatic Auction [Tradart] 3 (1 December 1985), lot 16; Charles Gillet Collection, 324; Spink & Galerie des Monnaies (10 October 1977), lot 56.

This magnificent tetradrachm is from a series at Rhegion that is regarded as having the most finely engraved dies of all the numismatic output of the mint. The earliest phase features dies signed by the artist Kratesippos, but the later unsigned dies, such as were used here, are regarded as the pinnacle of this period at Rhegion. Herzfelder called the engraver of these dies “the Master of the Rhegium Apollo.” While the style of Apollo on these dies was conventionally considered to have been influenced by the “Master of the Leaf” of the slightly earlier issues of Katane, R.R. Holloway suggests that there was actually a common prototype for both issues, which served as a model for coinages as far away as the Chalkidian League. This high period of artistry at Rhegion coincides with the famed issues of the “signing artists” of Sicily, and was only brought to a conclusion with the sack of the city by Dionysios I of Syracuse in 386 BC.