Theme Day on Numismatics of the Early Modern Period

The event begins at 1.30 p.m. with a book presentation. The publication "Jacopo Strada's Magnum Ac Novum Opus. A Sixteenth-Century Corpus of Ancient Numismatics" is the result of a research project by Dr Dirk Jacob Jansen and Dr Volker Heenes, which was based at the Research Centre from 2015 to 2022. Jacopo Strada (ca. 1515–1588), antiquarian, architect and antiquities dealer, created a 30-volume corpus for his patron Johann Jakob Fugger in the mid-16th century, the Magnum ac Novum Opus (MaNO), which is stored in the Gotha Research Library, among other places. The project at the Gotha Research Centre has analysed Jacopo Strada's numismatic work in its historical and artistic context, researched the sources and worked out its significance for the scientific history of numismatics and antiquarian research. Dr Dirk Jacob Jansen and Dr Volker Heenes will also introduce the databases into which the coins depicted by Strada were fed during the course of the project to enable them to be found for numismatic purposes.

Afterwards, at 4 p.m., the director of the research centre, Professor Martin Mulsow, will present his own current publication "Fremdprägung. Münzwissen im Zeitalter der Globalisierung" (Coin Knowledge in the Age of Globalisation). In it, Mulsow explores the intricate ways in which Asian coins found their way into European collections and archives and the attraction these foreign coins had for European scholars in the 17th and early 18th centuries. With the help of exotic coins, they explored the Near and Far East from their armchairs, deciphered coin inscriptions and systematised images.

This will be followed at 5.15 p.m. by a guest lecture by numismatist Dr Bernhard Woytek (Vienna). He will address a scholarly debate about the authenticity of seemingly antique coins, which kept collectors and numismatists in suspense for months in 18th century Vienna.

Registration is requested at forschungszentrum.gotha@uni-erfurt.de.