(sold for $54.0)

1981, Austria. Beautiful Silver 500 Schilling "Verdun Altar at Klosterneuburg" Coin. PCGS MS-64!

Mint Year: 1981 Mint Place: Vienna Reference: KM-2951. Condition: Certified and graded by PCGS as MS-64! Denomination: 500 Schilling - Verdun Altar at Klosterneuburg Material: Silver (.640) Diameter: 38mm Weight:  24gm

The Verdun Altar is located at the Klosterneuburg Monastery in Austria. It was made in c.1181 and it is named after Nicholas of Verdun. Its composition contains detailed decorative panels which depict biblical scenes. The work is divided into 3 compartments that are comprised out of 45 copper squares. It is also split into 3 rows due to biblical reference and we have the central theme being the life of Jesus while the adjacent sides illustrate the life of Adam and Noah or David and the Babylonian captivity. The Medium used for this work is called champlevé enamel work where a metal base with compartments is filled with enamel. The program is set up according to biblical scenes and is considered to be the most important surviving work done with ambitious effort for something that was made in the 12th century. There is a transition of early Romanesque to a more classical handling according to the way the work was treated. (Camille 1996, 77)

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Nicholas of Verdun (c. 1130–c. 1205) was a renowned metalworker, goldsmith and enamelworker active around the years 1180 - 1205. He was born in the Lotharingian city of Verdun, on the western fringe of the German empire. The region extending from the valley of the Rhine and Meuse rivers to Cologne was the major northern center of copperplate enameled metalwork in the 12th century and Nicholas was probably trained in one of the many Mosan workshops. Although he must have maintained a large atelier of his own with numerous assistants, possibly based in Verdun, commissions in Cologne, northern France and outside Vienna required him to travel frequently.

Around the year 1200, a new awareness in northern Europe of Byzantine art, coinciding with a revival of interest in classical art, led to the emergence of a highly classicizing style of figural representation in stone sculpture, metalwork and manuscript illumination. Nicholas of Verdun was a leading practitioner of this short-lived proto-Renaissance as seen in the enameled plaques of the Klosterneunurg Altar and the Three Kings Shrine in Cologne Cathedral.

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