Andrea Fulvio’s Illustrium imagines (1517) was recognized repeatedly in the sixteenth century as the first published book to present systematically material remains of Antiquity, in this case in the form of coins, predominantly Roman. The purposes of the present study are to determine for Fulvio’s text the standard of knowledge of Roman history and the methodology employed in exploiting the material remains of Antiquity to corroborate, amplify or correct the understanding of that history as gained exclusively from texts. Methodology should be understood here to mean not simply the processes by which the author examined the coin evidence, but also the inclination of the author to rely on the material evidence against the textual. At a time when all antiquarians were educated exclusively in texts, the willingness to recognize and take advantage of the information available from objects would represent a critical disposition for the development of the disciplines of archaeology and art history.

The Illustrivm imagines presents a history of Rome from its establishment down to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III, presented as a series of summary epitaphs accompanied by an image of the individual in coin format. The concern of the present study is with those entries where the image derives from an ancient coin. The medieval entries, where all the images are imaginary constructions, therefore are not evidence for how visual objects were handled. The examination considers the image on the represented coin and its legend with the aim of establishing the degree of accuracy for both the legend and the image, and thereby identify, where possible, the Roman coin that functioned as a model.

Several conditions effect the examination presented. How the image on the original Roman coin was communicated to the illustrator is unknown. When the study refers to Fulvio’s image it should be understood that this recognizes a collaboration between Fulvio and the illustrator in producing the published image. The determination of variances in both the legend and especially the image drawn from a model inevitably has an element of subjectivity to it. The goal is to establish for which images the legend and image seem to rely on actual Roman coins by identifying as nearly as possible the coin model. With the large number of Roman coins that are today in private collections, and the possibility that a coin issue known in the sixteenth century has evaded the modern scholarly record, the certainty of that identification will vary with each individual case. Further, any assessment of Fulvio’s accuracy with respect to both the legends and the images must weigh the realities in which he worked. In contrast to modern numismatic studies where often the legend and image of a particular issue can be compiled by comparison of a number of representative examples, it would be unreasonable to assume that in any given case Fulvio worked with that luxury. In fact, it would appear that in many cases he knew only one example of the coin type with which he worked. All questions of the exact wording of the legend or the precise iconography of the image had to be answered from that single example.

The same qualifiers extend to the ancient texts on which Fulvio drew. It is not the intent of this study to undertake a systematic study of his use of ancient texts. Nevertheless, understanding what he knew of Roman history from existing ancient texts is vital to understanding how he used the material evidence of a coin in each particular case. To the extent it effects the methodology of his examining the coins, the information available to him from surviving texts has its place. The specific information presented in the epitaphs can indicate which ancient texts he drew upon, and what textual information he chose to accept and what to reject. His awareness of problems with the accuracy of those ancient texts plays its part in how he then responded to the material evidence. The breadth of his knowledge of ancient texts rests on a list compiled and inserted at the end of some later editions of his Antiquitates urbis of 1527, although this list should not be assumed to be complete. There is as well the internal evidence of the epitaphs themselves. As is the case with the coins, his access to texts conditioned his work. Ancient texts that had already been published presumably represented information of easier access than those texts that could only be consulted in a surviving manuscript. The nature of the published ancient texts, what manuscript(s) they relied on, how good their text was, what portion of the author’s work was actually included, all would effect the facts as Fulvio understood them, and by extension his response to the information from the coins.

It is assumed here that Fulvio is representative of the standard of knowledge among antiquarians at the beginning of the sixteenth century. But because he was acknowledged throughout the century for initiating the publication of Roman coins (and inscriptions) his work was inevitably that to which later publications responded. It is therefore sometimes possible to identify ideas in his text, probably peculiarly his, that were in flux and open to challenge. These comprise points about both Roman history and Roman numismatics. Although the present study does not aspire to be a history of sixteenth-century numismatics, both the influences of Fulvio’s book, and the challenges to his conclusions by later antiquarians are addressed as they illuminate the conclusions he draws about individual coins.

A large section of the current study consists of the compiling of data. Each individual entry that the evidence indicates relies on an ancient coin is examined in the context of the Roman history as Fulvio narrates it. The final chapter then considers the information from these individual cases comparatively in order to address the broader issues of his methodology and access to the coin sources. An addendum presents available iconographic information which points to the coin collection that later came into the possession of the Borghese family as having been one to which Fulvio had access.