Sigebert Havercamp & Pietro Santi Bartoli (engr.)

Medailles de grand et moyen bronze du cabinet de la reine Christine, gravées aussi délicatement, qu'exactement d'après les originaux en LXIII planches.

La Haye, Pierre de Hondt, 1742. Folio. 40 x 25,5 cms. [10] (of 12 pp., NB: lacking the Latin version of the title-leaf, ”Nummophylacium Reginae Christinae”) + 464 pp. + 63 engraved plates by Pietro Santi Bartoli with some 1800 depictions of coins and medals. Text bilingual in French and Latin. Engraved vignettes.

Contemporary full calf, spine gilt in compartments, somewhat rubbed but sound, traces of deleted label or bookplate in top left corner of front pastedown. Contents partly foxed, plates with numbering in ink added to each medal or coin. Round stamp and bookplate of Alexander Erba Odescalchi.

First and only edition of this bilingual description of the collection of coins of the queen Christina of Sweden (1626-1689). Havercamp (Utrecht 1683-1743 Leyden) was professor at Leyden University from 1721 on and had a broad knowledge in numismatics. The engraver of the present plates, the Perugia born Pietro Santo Bartoli (1635-1700) was antiquarian to both queen Christina and Benedetto Odescalchi (1611-1689) who became Pope in 1676 under the name of Innocentius XI. The Pope’s nephew Livio Odescalchi famously purchased most of Queen Christina’s collections of art and antiquities a few years after her death in 1689.

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