Half Sovereign: Henry VIII (obverse); Crowned Arms (reverse) (1544–47): Art, History and Details

Half Sovereign: Henry VIII (obverse); Crowned Arms (reverse) (1544–47) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In this third coinage, a new portrait of the king appears. There is now an attempt to make the portrait lifelike, and we see the king fat and middle-aged compared to previous coinage such as 1969.170.

Object facts

• Title: Half Sovereign: Henry VIII (obverse); Crowned Arms (reverse)
• Date: 1544–47
• Culture: England, Henry VIII, 1509-1547
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.4 cm (1 5/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.174

A detail from the museum

The half sovereign was first introduced in 1544 under Henry VIII and was valued at half a pound sterling or ten shillings.

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.