Jeton of King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria
Category
Coins and medals
Date
1616
Materials
Silver
Measurements
276 mm (Diameter)
Place of origin
Paris
Order this imageCollection
Osterley Park and House, London
NT 773244
Summary
Silver, Jeton of King Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Paris, France, 1616. A silver jeton issued by the municipal administration in Paris in 1616, depicting King Louis XIII of France (1601-43) and his new bride Anne of Austria (1601-66), whom he had married the year before, in 1615. The obverse depicts the conjoined busts of the royal couple facing right. The reverse has a ship emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis, above it a crown and the monogram 'AL'. The legends on obverse and reverse together form a single phrase, taken from Book 5 of Virgil’s Aeneid, translating as ‘now both move together with even prows' (Virgil, Aeneid, V, lines 157-58, ‘nunc una ambae iunctisque feruntur frontibus’). The exergue of the reverse contains the name of the publisher, Robert Miron, Provost of Paris at this time, and the date, 1616.
Full description
Louis XIII (1601-43) was born on 27 September 1601 and became king whilst just a boy, when his father King Henri IV was assassinated, on 14 May 1610. Whilst he was still a minor, Louis’ mother Marie de’Medicis ruled France as regent. The king obtained his majority at the age of 13 and, on 28 November 1615, he married the Spanish princess Anne of Austria (1601-1666), eldest daughter of King Philip III of Spain and his wife Margaret of Austria, and sister of King Philip IV of Spain. After a series of stillbirths, which caused their marriage to deteriorate, Anne finally gave birth to an heir, the future Louis XIV, on 5 September 1638, thus securing the Bourbon line. Jetons are very similar to medals and, like them, do not carry any monetary value. However, they served a different purpose, being used as counters for calculations during the medieval period. By the late 16th century, they were coming to be replaced by more sophisticated counting devices. Jetons produced in France and the Netherlands around this time were essentially regarded as collectors’ items. The jeton featuring Louis XIII and Anne of Austria was issued by the city of Paris, under the name of Robert Miron, seigneur du Tremblay (1570-1641), who had been elected Prévôt des marchands de Paris, a post roughly equating to Mayor, on 16 August 1614, occupying the position for two years, until 16 August 1616 (Les Antiquitez de la ville de Paris, Paris 1640, p. 691). Jeremy Warren 2019
Provenance
Given to the National Trust in 1993 by George Child Villiers, 9th Earl of Jersey (1910-1998).
Credit line
National Trust Collections (Osterley Park, Jersey Collection)
Marks and inscriptions
Obverse, legend: IVNCTISQVE. FERVNTVR. FRONTIBVS. Reverse, legend:: NVNC. VNA. AMBE. Reverse, between masts of ship: LA Exergue: DE. LA. P. DE. M. R./.MYRON./1616
References
Feuardent 1904: Félix Feuardent, Jetons et méreaux depuis Louis IX jusqu'à la fin du consulat de Bonaparte. I. Grandes administrations de l'État et de la ville de Paris, corporations, etc., noblesse et villes de l'Ile-de-France, Paris 1904, p. 280, no. 3498. Guéant and Prieur 2007: Olivier Guéant and Michel Prieur. Bustes des Rois et Reines de France sur les jetons de l’ancien régime, Paris 2007, p. 56, no. 131B (obverse only).