Angel: An Angel Slaying a Dragon (obverse); Ship with Shield of Arms (reverse) (1553–54): Art, History and Details

Angel: An Angel Slaying a Dragon (obverse); Ship with Shield of Arms (reverse) (1553–54) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This piece is one of the finest specimens known. It contains on the reverse, at the end of the legend, an unexplained mark that strongly resembles a small letter c, superimposed on a figure 7.

Object facts

• Title: Angel: An Angel Slaying a Dragon (obverse); Ship with Shield of Arms (reverse)
• Date: 1553–54
• Culture: England, Mary, 1553-1554
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 2.9 cm (1 1/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.180

A detail from the museum

The angel was an English gold coin introduced by Edward IV in 1465.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Emery May Norweb. English Gold Coins, Ancient to Modern Times, On Loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Norweb Collection. [Catalog. 1968.]

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.