There are small medals that tell the great story of the Kingdom of France.
The more refined they were, the more they ensured the prestige of their sponsors.
Those which will be sold on June 9 by Lugdunum - a house specializing in numismatics in Solothurn (Solothurn), a baroque town, former seat of the French embassies in Switzerland - are in more than one way exceptional.
They were brought together at the beginning of the 20th century by Martine, countess of Béhague (1870-1939), the muse of Marcel Proust in the Paris of the Belle Époque.
This great traveler crisscrossed the oceans on her yacht
Le Nirvana
to acquire the rarest pieces for her eclectic collections.
Paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, porcelain, Greek coins, antiques and objects from the Far East populated his mansion at 123, rue Saint-Dominique in Paris, nicknamed the “Byzantium of Gros-Caillou” by Robert de Montesquiou.
Today it is the seat of the Romanian Embassy.
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