Images from the Getty museums

[Valentinian]

The Getty museums in LA and Malibu, California, are fabulous. For us, Malibu may be of more interest because it has the ancient material. Their website has many artifacts photographed and offered for downloading without restriction.  I just downloaded this image (and compressed it so it wouldn't be too many bytes for posting).

Commodus. 
The site gives the size: "69.9 × 61 × 22.8 cm, 92.9874 kg (27 1/2 × 24 × 9 in., 205 lb.), Object (Including Socle): 92.5 cm (36 7/16 in.), Other (Socle (Which May Not Be Original To The Bust)): 22.5 cm (8 7/8 in.)"

Their site is here:
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/
I got that image by searching for "Roman bust".

To make this post include coins, here is one:

Very large. 37 mm and 27.21 grams.
Aegeae, Cilicia.
Commodus.

Athena standing left holding winged Victory, stag in lower left field.
BMC --. SNG Copenhagen --. Lindgren and Kovacs 1401. SNG France 2 plate 130 obverse of 2336 and reverse of 2337.

[panzerman]

Thanks for sharing Valentinian!

[Curtis JJ]

I went to graduate school not far from the Getty and drove past often... but regrettably never visited. Nor did I ever visit the local ancient coin club...

Not long ago I bought this copy of Margarete Bieber's (1879-1978) little 1968 book on The Statue of Cybele in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Several coins are illustrated with Cybele reverses.

Bieber was a famous classicist/historian, one of the first women to become a professor in her field. She also had a coin collection (acq. by Harvard in 2005). Interestingly, this copy is signed/inscribed to the numismatist and ANS curator, Margaret Thompson (1911-1992). (Her name is misspelled -- in the acknowledgements too!)

 

Here she is on the website, but what happened to her nose? It's in the book photos, but apparently it's actually missing. Need to re-read for any clues.... https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SPE

 

Also, if anyone has one of the Jonathan P. Rosen Collection coins in the little orange ANS volume by Nancy Waggoner (1983), your coin was on loan to the Getty Museum in the early 80s. Only about 100 of the coins were actually put on public exhibition, of which 50 are included in slim exhibition volume (which can be bought pretty cheaply). But the rest were apparently there too, somewhere on the grounds.

I highly doubt mine was among those exhibited (certainly not in the 50 from Getty's publication on it), but is No. 548 in Waggoner's Rosen Sylloge:

Edited February 9 by Curtis JJ

[Sol_Invictus]

The Getty Villa has such a beautiful setting in the Malibu hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean! If you are in the area and haven’t been there before, I highly recommend a visit. They don’t have a huge number of coins on display, but those that are on display are all very lovely. 
 

Their Roman aureii display is jaw dropping (though I suppose some of our members here could make a similar display from their own collections 😀). Here’s a photo I took of it about a year ago, together with photos of the legend:

 

 

And a few Sicilian coins:

 

They also have some other Greek and Persian coins scattered around as well.  Probably my favorite coin on display is a huge Gordian III medallion. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of it, and curiously I can’t find in their database. They had a number of other medallions in the case, though I can’t remember all the emperors.