Pound: Elizabeth I (obverse); Crowned Shield of Arms (reverse) (1595–98): Art, History and Details

Pound: Elizabeth I (obverse); Crowned Shield of Arms (reverse) (1595–98) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

For a long time all Elizabethan gold was considered as one series, but now it is divided into three, in accordance with who was in charge of the Tower mint and in accordance with the sequence of initial marks. On the reverse the initial mark is a key and can be seen just before the start of the inscription. On the obverse is a woolpack although it is overstruck. This points to the reuse of the die.

Object facts

• Title: Pound: Elizabeth I (obverse); Crowned Shield of Arms (reverse)
• Date: 1595–98
• Culture: England, Elizabeth I, 1558-1603
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.8 cm (1 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.185

A detail from the museum

Queen Elizabeth still appears youthful in this portrait; she wears an elaborate bejeweled dress and her long hair flows from underneath her crown.

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.