A beautiful, original medal from Poland's most famous medal series - the Royal Suite.
Medal of the revered reign of Sigismund I the Old, from the early stage of minting, even before the obverse stamp was broken. In a very nice state of preservation.
In addition, with valued provenance - a mysterious collection known, among others, for the multi-drachma and multi-drachma coins of Royal Poland (round punch on the rim, at 12 o'clock).
Signed I. I. R. (Jan Jakub Reichel).
Silver, diameter 45 mm, weight 40.48 g.
The Royal Suite is the most coveted and most difficult to collect medal series in Polish numismatics. Original medals from this series appear in commerce very rarely, some of them even once every few or a dozen years.
The initiator of the royal series was King Stanislaw August Poniatowski. In 1791 he commissioned his court medalist, the famous Jan Filip Holzhaeusser, to create a post of Polish kings on medals. They were to depict a portrait of the king on the obverse, whose prototypes were Bacciarelli's paintings hanging in the Royal Castle, and on the reverses a concise description of the achievements of the respective ruler, for which Poniatowski himself was to be responsible.
And so, in 1791, the first of 11 stamps for which Holzhaeusser was responsible were created. After his death a year later, Jan Jakub Reichel continued the work, preparing medals from Sigismund I the Old. In total, between 1791 and 1798, stamps were created for 23 medals, which today constitute the set of the Suite.
Medals in the 18th century were minted in gold (according to M. Męclewska, one piece each for Stanislaw Augustus), silver and, according to some historical sources, bronze. Among the latter, we also find later prints from the original stamps, which, together with numerous 19th-century casts, copies or medallions along the lines of the series (including Minter's), testify to the great interest in the suite and the problems posed by its collection. Both at the time of the Partitions and today, more than 200 years later.
