KINGS OF MACEDON. Philip II, 359-336 BC. Tetradrachm (Silver, 25 mm, 14.49 g, 1 h), Pella, circa 342/1-337/6. Laureate head of Zeus to right. Rev. ΦΙΛΙΠ-ΠΟΥ Young jockey, holding palm frond in his right hand and reins in his left, riding horse to right; below horse, thunderbolt; in exergue, [N]. HGC 3.1, 864. Le Rider 295 (D163/R233). SNG ANS 395 (same obverse die). Beautifully toned and very well struck from dies in the finest late Classical style. A wonderful piece, formerly in the collection of the celebrated Comtesse de Béarn. Very minor marks, otherwise, extremely fine.



Martine-Marie-Pol de Béhague (1870-1939), later Comtesse de Béarn, ranks among the most fascinating female collectors of the Belle Époque. Descended from a great Parisian collecting family, she combined immense wealth with an unusually sure eye for what was rare, precious, and stylistically exceptional. She transformed her Hôtel de Béhague in the Rue Saint-Dominique into a legendary setting for art, one that not only housed her outstanding collections but also, in 1906, became a stage for avant-garde spectacle through the private Théâtre byzantin designed by Mariano Fortuny.

The comtesse was also a passionate traveller: aboard her yachts, above all the 'Nirvana', she crossed the Mediterranean and more distant seas in search of works of art, antiquities, manuscripts, and other treasures from a wide range of cultures. Recent scholarship has therefore come to see in her far more than a wealthy amateur. Martine de Béhague now emerges as an independent-minded aesthete, patron, and one of the most dazzling, if also most enigmatic, cultural figures of her time.