Medal Commemorating the Signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz
Medallist: Johannes Lefken. 1700
- Silver. D-41.1. Total weight: 25.83 g.
- Мед.А-518
In January 1699 members of the Holy League (the Holy Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Republic of Venice) signed the Treaty of Karlowitz with the Ottoman Empire. In Karlowitz, representatives of the Tsardom of Moscow also concluded a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire for two years. They continued their bilateral negotiations in Istanbul, and on July 3, 1700 they signed the Treaty of Constantinople, allowing Russia to obtain Azov, which had been captured in 1696. By concluding the peace treaty in the south for thirty years, Peter the Great immediately started a war against Sweden.
Numismatic literature traditionally refers to the medal made by the two famous Nuremberg medallists, Georg Hautsch and G.F. Nurneberger, as a medal “commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz;” although it should actually be called a medal “commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople.”
The original dies of the medal had worn out, and so when the medal was produced in the 18th century, craftsmen would use the medal type of the tsar created by Johannes Lefken for its obverse; Peter Alexeyevich was depicted as an elderly person, whereas on the original medal he was depicted as a young man.