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Augustin Dupré
Augustin Dupré (6 October 1748 – 30 January 1833) was a French engraver of currency and medals, the 14th Graveur général des monnaies (Engraver General of Currency). Biography He began his career as an engraver at the royal factory for weapons. Towards 1770, he became established at Paris, became the student of the sculptor David, and engraved his first medals. The French Revolution gave him the opportunity to develop his art. Because the change of regime and the monetary reform required a full change of monetary types, a competition, initiated by the painter Louis David, was opened in April 1791 by the Convention nationale. Dupré's design won and was adopted for the new currency, the "Louis conventionnel". Following this success, Dupré was named Graveur général des monnaies by decree of the Assemblée nationale on 11 July 1791. In France before the revolution there were 31 royal mints, but most of them were no more than sinecures. In 1789, there were no more than 17 ...
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Écu
The term ''écu'' () may refer to one of several French coins. The first ''écu'' was a gold coin (the ''écu d'or'') minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. The value of the ''écu'' varied considerably over time, and silver coins (known as ''écu d'argent'') were also introduced. ''Écu'' (from Latin ''scutum'') means shield, and the coin was so called because its design included the coat of arms of France. The word is related to Catalan '' escut'', Italian '' scudo'' or Portuguese Castilian '' escudo''. In English, the ''écu'' was often referred to as the crown. History Origin When Louis IX took the throne, France still used small silver deniers (abbreviated ''d''.), which had circulated since the time of Charlemagne to the exclusion of larger silver or gold coins. Over the years, French kings had granted numerous nobles and bishops the right to strike coins and their “feudal” coinages competed with the royal coinage. Venice and Florence had alrea ...
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Benjamin Duvivier
Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier (3 November 1730 – 10 July 1819) was a French engraver of coins and medals. Early years Pierre-Simon-Benjamin Duvivier was born in Paris on 3 November 1730. He was son of the well-known medallist Jean Duvivier and of his wife, Louise Vignon. His family originated from Liège. His brother was Thomas-Germain-Joseph Duvivier, also a painter and engraver. His sister Jeanne-Louise-Françoise married the engraver Jacques-Nicolas Tardieu and is on record as having made several engravings herself. Benjamin Duvivier was placed in the Collège Mazarin to study humanities and philosophy, where he met and befriended Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and Nicolas Louis de Lacaille, the future astronomer. He planned to undertake a voyage of exploration with Anquetil-Duperron, but was forced to cancel it for reasons of health. When his father violently objected to his decision to follow a career in art, he left home and moved in with his sister and broth ...
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Bertrand Andrieu
Bertrand Andrieu (24 November 1761 – 6 December 1822) was a French engraver of medals. He was born in Bordeaux. In France, he was considered as the restorer of the art, which had declined after the time of Louis XIV Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), also known as Louis the Great () or the Sun King (), was List of French monarchs, King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the Li .... During the last twenty years of his life, the French government commissioned him to undertake every major work of importance. References Sources * . * External links * 1761 births 1822 deaths Artists from Bordeaux 18th-century French engravers 19th-century French engravers 19th-century French male artists French medallists 18th-century French male artists {{printmaker-stub ...
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écu
The term ''écu'' () or crown may refer to one of several French coins. The first ''écu'' was a gold coin (the ''écu d'or'') minted during the reign of Louis IX of France, in 1266. ''Écu'' (from Latin ''scutum'') means shield, and the coin was so called because its design included the coat of arms of France. The word is related to Catalan '' escut'', Portuguese '' scudo'' or Castilian ''escudo''. The value of the ''écu'' varied considerably over time, and silver coins (known as ''écu d'argent'') were also introduced. History Origin When Louis IX took the throne, France still used small silver deniers, which had circulated since the time of Charlemagne to the exclusion of larger silver or gold coins. Over the years, French kings had granted numerous nobles and bishops the right to strike coins and their “feudal” coinages competed with the royal coinage. Venice and Florence had already shown that there was demand for larger silver and gold coins and in 1266 Louis IX ...
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Louis XVI
Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was executed by guillotine. He was the son of Louis, Dauphin of France, son and heir-apparent of King Louis XV, and Maria Josepha of Saxony. When his father died in 1765, he became the new Dauphin. Upon his grandfather's death on 10 May 1774, he became King of France and Navarre, reigning as such until 4 September 1791, when he received the title of King of the French, continuing to reign as such until the monarchy was abolished on 21 September 1792. The first part of his reign was marked by attempts to reform the French government in accordance with Enlightenment ideas. These included efforts to abolish serfdom, remove the '' taille'' (land tax) and the ''corvée'' (labour tax), and increase tolerance toward non-Catholics as well as abol ...
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Lady Justice
Lady Justice ( la, Iustitia) is an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems. Her attributes are scales, a sword and sometimes a blindfold. She often appears as a pair with Prudentia. Lady Justice originates from the personification of Justice in Ancient Roman art known as ''Iustitia'' or ''Justitia'', who is equivalent to the Greek goddess Dike. The goddess Justitia The origin of Lady Justice was Justitia (or Iustitia), the goddess of Justice within Roman mythology. Justitia was introduced by emperor Augustus, and was thus not a very old deity in the Roman pantheon. Justice was one of the virtues celebrated by emperor Augustus in his '' clipeus virtutis'', and a temple of Iustitia was established in Rome by emperor Tiberius. Iustitia became a symbol for the virtue of justice with which every emperor wished to associate his regime; emperor Vespasian minted coins with the image of the goddess seated on a throne called ''Iustitia Augusta'', and many ...
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Lictor
A lictor (possibly from la, ligare, "to bind") was a Roman civil servant who was an attendant and bodyguard to a magistrate who held ''imperium''. Lictors are documented since the Roman Kingdom, and may have originated with the Etruscans. Origin The lictors were instituted by Rome's first king, Romulus, who appointed twelve lictors to attend him. Livy refers to two competing traditions for the reason that Romulus chose that number of lictors. The first version is that twelve was the number of birds that appeared in the augury, which had portended the kingdom to Romulus. The second version, favoured by Livy, is that the number of lictors was borrowed from the Etruscan kings, who had one lictor appointed from each of their twelve states. Eligibility Originally, lictors were chosen from the plebeians, but through most of Roman history, they seemed to have been freedmen. Centurions from the legions were also automatically eligible to become lictors on retirement from the army. The ...
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Fasces
Fasces ( ; ; a '' plurale tantum'', from the Latin word '' fascis'', meaning "bundle"; it, fascio littorio) is a bound bundle of wooden rods, sometimes including an axe (occasionally two axes) with its blade emerging. The fasces is an Italian symbol that had its origin in the Etruscan civilization and was passed on to ancient Rome, where it symbolized a magistrate's power and jurisdiction. The axe originally associated with the symbol, the Labrys ( Greek: , ') the double- bitted axe, originally from Crete, is one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization. To the Romans, it was known as a ''bipennis''. The image has survived in the modern world as a representation of magisterial or collective power, law, and governance. The fasces frequently occurs as a charge in heraldry: it is present on the reverse of the U.S. Mercury dime coin and behind the podium in the United States House of Representatives; and it was the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party in Italy (from ...
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Heracles
Heracles ( ; grc-gre, Ἡρακλῆς, , glory/fame of Hera), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through Amphitryon, Heracles receives the epithet Alcides, as "of the line of Alcaeus", father of Amphitryon. Amphitryon's own, mortal son was Iphicles. He was a great-grandson and half-brother (as they are both sired by the god Zeus) of Perseus, and similarly a half-brother of Dionysus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, the ancestor of royal clans who claimed to be Heracleidae (), and a champion of the Olympian order against chthonic monsters. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, but added anecdotal detail of their ...
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Genius (mythology)
In Roman religion, the genius (; plural ''geniī'') is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing. Much like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died. For women, it was the Juno spirit that would accompany each of them. Nature Each individual place had a genius (''genius loci'') and so did powerful objects, such as volcanoes. The concept extended to some specifics: the genius of the theatre, of vineyards, and of festivals, which made performances successful, grapes grow, and celebrations succeed, respectively. It was extremely important in the Roman mind to propitiate the appropriate genii for the major undertakings and events of their lives. Thus man, following the dictates of his heart, venerated something higher and more divine than he could find in his own limited individuality, and brought to "this great unknown of himself" offerings as a god; thu ...
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