‡ Sicily, Syracuse, tetradrachm, c. 405-400 BC, circle of Eukleidas, fast quadriga with horses galloping wildly driven left by female charioteer who holds torch in her right hand; above, Nike flying right with wreath; in ex., ear of grain, rev., [ΣΥ-ΡΑ-]ΚΟΣΙΩΝ, head of Arethusa (or Nike?) right with her hair drawn up and bound in a bun at the crown of her head, wearing triple-drop pendant earing and necklace; around, four dolphins, 17.14g, die axis 9.00 (Tudeer 62; Fischer-Bossert 62n, this coin; Gulbenkian 284; AMB 466; SNG Lockett 971-2, all from the same dies), toned and extremely fine Provenance: Hess Leu, 16 April 1957, lot 110; Bank Leu 50, 25 April 1990, lot 67; European Connoisseur collection (formed before 2002).Notes: ‘[A] very beautiful female head, the full artistic significance of which seems hitherto to have escaped notice...[and whose] features, for purity of outline, are unsurpassed in the Syracusan series.’ (A.J. Evans, Syracusan ‘Medallions’, 1892, pp. 146-7). Evans interpreted the ‘head with the waving top-knot ... [as] the head of a flying Nike’, and was the first to notice its unorthodox angle. Using her earring as a plumb bob: ‘It is the head, and not the pendant ornament that is intended to bend forward.’ To Evans, the angle confirmed his identification of the head: ‘the earring in fact enables us to supply the wings’. The obverse die is shared with Eukleidas’s signed masterpiece bearing the helmeted facing head of Athena (Tudeer 59).

Estimate: GBP 20000-30000