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Department Of Coins Medals And Antiquities At The National Library Of France

48 52 '04 "N 2 20' 18" E / 48.8678, 2.3384

The department of coins, medals and antiques is a division of the National Library of France (BNF). It is located on the traditional site of the BnF, rue de Richelieu , in the ^Second district of Paris.

It is also known as traditional medals Cabinet and Cabinet of France.

History

The cabinet houses the collections of manuscripts, jewelry and "medals" (name given to the ^nineteenth century , the ancient coins) collected by the kings of France since the Middle Ages. They are then made for fun, but also as a reserve safety metal. At the end of wars of religion , Charles IX (reigned 1560 to 1574 ) creates the office of "private security guard of the king's medals and antiques" to protect the heritage of the Crown.

He began to expand rapidly under Louis XIV : the heir of curiosities of his uncle, Gaston d'Orleans , he enriched his collections of several acquisitions, including the treasure of Childeric ^I. , given by Emperor Leopold ^I in 1665. From 1658 , the king also asked printers to give the cabinet a copy of each publication . Around 1720 , the Cabinet returned to Paris in the old room the Marquise de Lambert . Robert de Cotte 's landscape from 1720 to 1740: the museum still retains the coin boxes of the era and the paintings of Boucher , Natoire and Van Loo.

The museum acquired a growing reputation, attracting many gifts and bequests: the ancient and the Comte de Caylus , or in 1862 , those of the Duke of Luynes. In 1776 , the Abbe Barthelemy Assistant him purchase the collection of 32,500 ancient Greek coins J. Pellegrin. Part of the Imperial Library and National Library, the Office continues to increase its funds. In 1917 , it is installed in its current premises on the first floor of the Rue Richelieu.

Collections

Grand Cameo of France, cameo in Sardonyx five layers, Rome, circa 23 BC. AD

The Cabinet of medals home to 520,000 coins and medals. Currencies, the majority, are divided into several collections:

currencies from French soil, the Gaul to the present day (60,000 copies);
Greek and Roman coins (225 000 copies);
Oriental coins, the Middle to the Far East (55,000 copies);
other foreign currencies (45,000 copies).

Coupled with other numismatic objects: medals (93 000 copies) and chips (20 000 copies), the Renaissance to the present.

The Cabinet also contains 35 000 non-monetary items, including:

the Treasury Berthouville , a set of silverware exceptional Roman times;
of cameos and intaglio (20,000 copies), including the Grand Cameo of France;
of Greek ceramics and Etruscan ;
the ivories of the Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire , including a series of consular diptychs ;
molded and blown glass, Greek and Roman;
sculptures of Egyptian , Greek or Roman ;
silverware Sasanian or Islamic.
part of which was the treasure of Saint-Denis (other parts are the Louvre ).
the throne of Dagobert , bronze head from the Carolingian period.

Finally, the coin cabinet houses a large collection of documents relating to its collection of 80 000 books. Centre for Documentation and Research, he publishes the series Treasures of money (22 volumes, from 1979 to 2006 ). He is also the headquarters of the French Society of Numismatics.

List of Directors of the Cabinet

1719-1754: Claude Gros de Boze ;
1754-1795: Jean-Jacques Barthlemy , "said Abbe Barthelemy;
1795-1799: Andrew Bartholomew Couray ;
1795-1818: Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison ;
1799-1830: Joseph-Franois-Pascal Gosselin ;
1832-1840: Jean Antoine Letronne ;
1818-1848: Desire Raoul Rochette ;
1840-1859: Charles Lenormant ;
1859-1890: Pierre Marie Anatole Chabouillet ;
1890-1892: Henri Michel Lavoie ;
1892-1924: Ernest Babelon ;
1924-1937: Adolphe Dieudonne ;
1937-1961: John Babelon ;
1961-1975: Georges Le Rider ;
1976-1987: Hlne Nicolet-Pierre ;
1988-1990: Ccile Morrisson ;
since 1991: Michel Amandry.

References

Robert Estivals, legal deposit under the ancien regime (from 1537 to 1791), M. Riviere, Paris, 1961, p. 20-21.
The National Library of France: remember the future , p. 21.
The National Library of France: remember the future , p. 29.

Sources

Thierry Sarma , The Cabinet of medals from the National Library (1661-1848), Paris: Ecole des Chartes , 1994, 403 p. (Coll. memoirs and documents).

Cristina Rodriguez , Behind the Scenes of the Cabinet of Medals, a long series of articles illustrated with dozens of photos dedicated to the various collections of the Cabinet in the journal Coin and Change

External Links

The Cabinet of medals on the website of the BNF;
http://www.cabinetdesmedailles.net , site for the Defense of the Museum of medals and antique BnF, threatened with extinction.