Sovereign: Henry VIII Enthroned (obverse); Royal Arms on Tudor Rose (reverse) (1526–44): Art, History and Details

Sovereign: Henry VIII Enthroned (obverse); Royal Arms on Tudor Rose (reverse) (1526–44) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

During his life Henry VII had accumulated enormous wealth, and it took his son, Henry VIII, until 1542 to squander it. Henry knew how the English coinage had been debased in the past and did not see why it should not be debased again, this time for his personal benefit. Regardless of the inevitable financial catastrophe, he grasped at this easy revenue and in his last years not only debased the gold coinage to 20 ct., but the silver also, to one part silver and two parts alloy.

Object facts

• Title: Sovereign: Henry VIII Enthroned (obverse); Royal Arms on Tudor Rose (reverse)
• Date: 1526–44
• Culture: England, Henry VIII, 1509-1547
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 4.2 cm (1 5/8 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.170

A detail from the museum

The Sovereign was first produced by Henry VII in 1489; he wanted a new gold coin to represent the power of his reign.

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.