Silver coin with bust of Athena (obverse) and owl standing on amphora (reverse), 172–171 BCE
Curatorial Notes:
Piranesi based the design of the Osservazioni vignette on a real coin. He took an Athenian prototype and Romanized several of its elements. In the print, a helmet replaces the amphora under the owl’s talons, and a hieroglyphic tabula ansata replaces an olive branch. Like the objects scattered in the foreground, the elements in the frieze do not seem to derive from any particular source; rather they appear to be an amalgamation of typical objects that appear throughout Piranesi’s work, including the dividers, the mask, and the cornucopia.
Additional notes:
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/coin-13731
Credit line:
Coin 13731. Numismatic Collection, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library