Faux book box. Booklet with wraps
1823 · Netherlands and/or Nuremburg
by Stettner, Johann Thomas (1785-1872)
Netherlands and/or Nuremburg, 1823. Faux book box. Booklet with wraps. Very Good. Scarce, with the only copy found on OCLC First Search at Indiana University. Faux book box containing booklet on one side and schraubthaler housed in well on opposing side. The box measures 92 by 76 by 19 mm. The booklet, 73 by 53 mm, and is 15 pages, bound in orange wraps. The coin is 45 mm in diameter. The tin coin has a relief portrait on Pius VII on one side, of Mary holding the infant Jesus, on the other face. The inside of the metal, front and back, have paste down text in German. Within the coin, which you unscrew, are housed eight disks, each featuring a hand-colored engraving with captioning below, also all in German. The sixteen scenes are numbered above, and they tell of the pope's saga during the Napoleonic era. Pius VII (Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti, 1742-1823) was elected Pope in 1800, the year following the death of Pius VI in France who had been captured and taken to France by Napoleon's troops in 1796. Pius VII himself was taken prisoner by Napoleon in 1809. In 1814 he returned to Rome triumphant as a hero and defender of the faith. The box has green paper pastedowns, front and back, with the front centered with a small print of the St. Peters, this print pasted onto the green paper. Stettner, the silversmith, was based in Nuremburg. Because the booklet is in Dutch, one would think that the booklet was produced in the Netherlands. The celebration of a pope, though, would certainly have been more pronounced in Bavaria. This "steckmedaille" is not listed in Pressler, the most comprehensive source on the genre. Condition: without ribbon which would have bound the medallions to one another.
(Inventory #: 006758)