I”m doing image research for an article. I’m probably going to go with this specimen from Haeberlin’s own collection as illustrated on his plate 44. It is free of copyright being now in the public domain and one could not get a clearer representation, and yet…
The vast majority of RRC 14/2 specimens look nothing at all like this. I don’t care if you’re looking at CRRO or what has appeared recently in trade. This specimen is shocking beautiful. Do I doubt its authenticity? Not particularly. I have however come to realize how much better aes grave looks when photographed from a plaster cast than from the specimen itself. Here’s a specimen that sold last year with no provenance information in Switzerland and a listed weight of 171,86g.
I’m fairly confident that it is the same specimen as Haeberlin 1910, pl. 45, 2 from the Sambon collection listed with a weight of 172.25 g.
It took me a minute to make this conclusion because the color photograph looks so radically different in detail than the bw from the plaster cast with all color data from the surface removed. If I got Berlin to photograph the Haeberlin specimen for me, in all likelihood it would probably appear much uglier and far harder to see the detail. Frankly I”m pretty sure I’ve held this specimen and may even have a study photograph… [not that I could find, darn it]. I would if I could look for tool marks to improve the definition especially in the crest of the helmet. Again not relevant to the article.
Some of you know my love of using photographic overlays and transparencies to compare images. Typically I use it to check die links but it also works in cases like this. When trimming the cast of the Venus side of the coin, the person doing the trimming clearly eliminated the portion which what caused by a misalignment of the two halves of the original mold used to make the coin.
Anyway part of me wonders if using such a ‘good’ image in the publication is misleading to my readership. The Haeberlin plate image doesn’t look anything like the vast majority of known specimens.
Of all the specimens I’ve looked at today another that caught my eye was Hirsch 1914, pl. 19, 290. (See earlier post on this problematic historic auction.)
Notice the definition in the curls of Venus. Really extra ordinary and unique. So do the backwards S under her neck and the difficulty of the modern plaster cast in dealing with the prominent sprue.
Ok I need to stop looking at specimens and get back to writing the actual article.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 