Baroque stands for the art history epoch between 1570 and 1770. Above all, the term characterises a whole awareness of life and is applied to architecture, sculpture, and painting, philosophy, literature and theatre, fashion, music and dance. Baroque is a byword for affluence, splendour and motion. Baroque loves drama and spectacle; it is loud, flashy and colourful. The Baroque world is a stage and its life is a theatre.

The latest Tiffany coin shows the perhaps illustrious example of such Baroque art; the Palace of Versailles. The «Sun King», Ludwig XIV (1638-1715), reconstructed his predecessor’s small hunting lodge, at the gates of Paris, into a total baroque work of art. The gigantic complex with more than 2’000 rooms not only served as an entertainment location. It was rather an elaborate sophisticated instrument for absolutistic political power. The complex was supposed to bond the scheming higher nobility close to the king and announce Ludwig’s message to the whole world: I am the states affluence and the only representative of God on the earth and nobody can match my power. „L’état – c’est moi!“

The front side of this new coin gives insight to the magnificently equipped Hall of Mirrors in the palace of Versailles, the verso shows a fountain of „Parterre d’eau“ and in the background the palaces front garden. This masterpiece is punctuated by a glass pane in best baroque splendour.