1551

PRUSSIA: AE medal, 1828. AU

Currency:USD Category:Coins & Paper Money / World Coins - Europe Start Price:140.00 USD Estimated At:150.00 - 250.00 USD
PRUSSIA: AE medal, 1828. AU
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This item SOLD at 2021 May 14 @ 17:34UTC-7 : PDT/MST
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PRUSSIA: AE medal, 1828, Brettauer-527, Wurzbach-3787, Fischhof-193, Lehnert-42, 63mm, bronze medal by Henri François Brandt for The "Cosmos Lectures" series held at Berlin University by Alexander von Humboldt; ALEXANDER - AB HVMBOLDT around portrait of von Humboldt right // ILLVSTRANS TOTVM RADIIS SPLENDENTIBVS ORBEM around Solis, the sun god, in the quadriga over a band of signs of the zodiac, with Neptune, Tellus Mater with cornucopia, sea dragon and lion below, BEROLINI / MDCCCXXVIII in exergue, AU. Henri François Brandt (1789-1845) was born in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel. His first master was a certain M. Perret, who was a well-known watch case engraver. He was apprenticed to Perret at the age of eleven in 1800. Seven years later he went to Paris, where he was given a position as engraver at the Paris mint (Monnaie de Paris) by Jean-Pierre Droz, a fellow Swiss citizen who was at the time, Keeper of the Mint. He left Paris in 1814 and, after a brief stay in Switzerland, left for Rome, where he stayed for three years. There he had the opportunity to meet the great sculptors Canova, Thorvaldsen, and Rauch, among many others. Brandt also engraved, in 1815, a medal of Guillon-Lethière, who was the current Director of the French Academy at the Villa Medici. In 1817, he was summoned to Berlin and was appointed First Engraver of Coins and Medals at the Royal Prussian mint (Königlichen Münze), a position he kept until his death in 1845. In 1827, Humboldt having spent himself into poverty publishing his scientific works, his king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, reminded him of his debt and recalled him to Berlin. When he arrived in Berlin, Humboldt announced that he would give a course of lectures on physical geography. From November 1827 to April 1828, he delivered a series of sixty-one lectures at the University of Berlin. The lectures were so well-attended that Humboldt soon announced a second series, which was held in a music hall before an audience of thousands, free to all comers. This series of lectures came to be known as the "Cosmos Lectures."