 Franklin Bare Head Medallion, 1779. Terra Cotta uniface, 164mm, 13.3mm thick at rim, 23.2mm thick at highest point. Fuld unlisted, Sellers 2, Plate 11:1, Greenslet GM-7. About Uncirculated. Faintly reddish-brown with patina rubbed off on one or two of the highest points. Back bears old pencil collector note, two adhesive labels with numbers/ Integral loop hanger slants from back to center of edge at 12:00.
Aged, partly bald with long locks and tuft at the crown faces l. The truncation bears exquisitely detailed fictitious Arms with jewel-fine detail of arm, rod and lightning, I. B. NINI F./ 1778 at l., NINI F 1779 appears in the field below. Minute leaf and vine stops punctuate ERIPUIT COELO FULMEN SCEPTRUMQUE TYRANNIS. This portrait is based on Paris genre painter Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818), a friend of Beaumarchais and Lafayette and later of Franklin.
Historian Benson J. Lossing later wrote feelingly, yet somewhat inaccurately, that she was introduced to Franklin during 1777 at Passy, ''There she had her first interview with the venerable sage and diplomat, and charmed him with her enthusiasm and personal magnetism. When, not long afterward, she was passing an afternoon with the philosopher, and receiving draughts of wisdom from the deep well of his knowledge, she sketched that profile of him... which is seen on the rare medals of red clay of Passy which Franklin's host caused to be struck in his honor.'' (Sellers, pp. 107-109). Lossing attributed the fur cap bust to her, though it is now firmly identified with Walpole. His ''red clay of Passy'' was Terra Cotta of Chaumont and manufacture was by mold, not by striking. Lossing may be forgiven, as he was no numismatist, and never let a few pesky facts obstruct the flow of his narrative.
The other great significance of the bare head was its recognition of Franklin, once a folksy sage from a collection of rebellious colonies, as an accredited diplomat of a new nation receiving full recognition from His Most Christian Majesty, King Louis XVI. Franklin medallions such as this now appeared on sale at the regular Sèvres porcelain exhibit at Versailles, underscoring the diplomatic significance of the portrait. Franklin wrote his daughter in Philadelphia that ''These...have made your father's face as well known as that of the moon, so that he durst not do anything that would oblige him to run away, as his phiz would discover him wherever he should venture to show it.'' There are few Franklin items that can compare with this for visual impressiveness and historic appeal.
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