The best comes at the end
Everything comes to an end, and so does the project of the Nowak Collection, which was funded by the Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport and the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. The team, David Burisch and Kathrin Siegl, under the direction of Klaus Vondrovec, looks back on a successful time.
In the last phase of the project, over 2000 coins were photographed, weighed, measured and classified, so that as of today a total of 5162 objects from the Nowak Collection can be accessed via IKMK.
Aside from the well-known so-called ‘Fallen Horseman’ (reverse type on Centenionales, minted under Emperor Constantius II), which frequently appears in numismatic finds from Austria, there are two gold coins in the new batch which, although they have the same scientific value as objects made of base metal, should be presented separately here due to the rarity of gold in numismatic finds: The first is an aureus of Emperor Hadrian. Its reverse shows Hercules sitting on a pile of weapons (FD 8019). The second coin is a solidus of Emperor Theodosius II from the first half of the 5th century AD, which was minted in Constantinople (today Istanbul) and shows the personification of this very city on the reverse (FD 8020).
The processing of the Nowak Collection, which comprises several 10000 pieces, is of course far from complete. We hope that the project will be continued so that a further portion of this important collection can be made accessible to the public.
Image: Hadrianus, aureus, gold, Rome, 121-123 AD, FD 8019.
