Sigismund II Augustus - royal entourage

The medal commemorating Sigismund II Augustus (1548-1572) is part of an excellent medal series created on the initiative of King Stanisław August Poniatowski (1764-1795), in which almost all crowned rulers of Poland were portrayed in the years 1791-1798. The king entrusted the work to Jan Filip Holzhaeusser (†1792), who produced the first eleven medals. The author of the remaining twelve works is Jan Jakub Reichel.

The obverses of the medals are decorated with representations of the rulers in right profile, modelled - apart from Stanisław Leszczyński - on the paintings by Marceli Bacciarelli from 1768-1771 in the Marble Room of the Royal Castle. The reverses are filled with elaborate Latin inscriptions. They describe the deeds of kings and give a concise description of their reign. They are very similar to the inscriptions on the backs of the mentioned paintings. Their author was probably Adam Naruszewicz (†1796). The design of each medal was approved by the king himself.

The obverse of the medal depicts King Sigismund II Augustus with a moustache, beard, wearing a hat with ostrich feathers, wearing a cuirass, a coat with a fur collar and with the Order of the Golden Fleece on a chain. The representation is completed by the inscription: SIGISMUNDUS AUGUSTUS, and the author's signature at the bottom: I. I. REICHEL F. The reverse is filled with a horizontal fourteen-line inscription, translating: "The only son of Sigismund I and Bona Sforza, elected king during his father's lifetime at the age of ten, after his father's death he made Courland a fief of the Republic of Poland, Lithuania was joined to Poland by an eternal knot, the last king of Poland from the Jagiellonian family. He died childless in Knyszyn in our Lord 1572, aged 52, in the 24th year of his reign, on the 18 July" (translation after: T. Bylicki, Katalog wystawy: Skarb z Kijowa. Złoty poczet. Królewska kolekcja medali Stanisława Augusta ze zbiorów Narodowego Muzeum Historii Ukrainy [The Catalogue of the Exhibition: Treasure from Kiev. Golden Post. Royal Collection of Medals of Stanisław August from the Collection of the National Museum of History of Ukraine], Warsaw 2012, p. 117).

Medals of the so-called Royal Entourage were struck in gold, silver and bronze. Bronze and silver complete series are collected in several Polish museums. Nineteen of the twenty gold specimens known to us are kept in the National Museum of History of Ukraine in Kiev, one in the National Museum in Warsaw.

The development of collecting since the end of the 18th century and the growing demand for memorabilia of the past prompted the re-use of the stamps of these medals during their storage in the Warsaw Mint, probably also after their removal by the tsarist authorities to St. Petersburg after the liquidation of the mint in 1868. Our electroforming copy should be dated to the years 1860–1890.

Tomasz Markiewicz