New Publication at the Gotha Research Centre on Renaissance Numismatics

Among the treasures of the Gotha Research Library at the University of Erfurt are 30 volumes showing - executed in pen and ink - historical coins from ancient Rome to Charles V. Jacopo Strada, antiquarian, architect and antique dealer, created this work in the mid-16th century for his patron Johann Jakob Fugger. In addition to these volumes of drawings, the "Magnum ac Novum Opus," Strada also compiled eleven volumes of structured and methodical descriptions, annotations, and provenances of the coins depicted.

In a project funded by the German Research Foundation, these two sources have been studied together for the first time at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt in order to trace Strada's interpretations of the coins and to study in detail the approach of early modern antiquarians.

After seven years of the project, funded by the DFG with more than € 1,260,000, Dr Volker Heenes (Archaeology) and Dr Dirk Jacob Jansen (Art History) have now presented the first volume with their results, which places the "Magnum ac novum opus" in the scientific history of numismatics. The richly illustrated book Jacopo Strada's Magnum Ac Novum Opus. A Sixteenth-Century Corpus of Ancient Numismatics is published in the series "CYRIACUS. Studies in the Reception of Antiquity".