In 2007 to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the First Britannia Coins, the Royal Mint released a very special Limited Issue Britannia Silver Proof 4 Coin Set struck in solid fine .958 Silver and includes the £2 Two Pound, £1 One Pound, 50p Fifty Pence and 20p Twenty Pence Coins.
It was the Romans who first named the Island of England and Scotland, Britannia and the Romans who, to depict their colonisation of a conquered country, first portrayed Britannia on their coins. Much later Britannia was to become a fitting symbol to grace the reverse of the copper coins of Charles II when, in direct allusion to the then war with the Dutch, her image symbolised her sovereignty of the seas. She has graced the coinage of every British Monarch since and over the centuries has naturally been subject to stylistic changes.
Now, especially for the Gold and Silver Britannia of 2007, a new image has been created by Christopher Le Brun RA. The portrait remains faithful to her character, giving her a more contemporary air yet still associating her with symbols of Britain. Christopher Le Brun admits that he found Britannia familiar yet 'profoundly strange and highly emotive' and was pleased that her emblematic nature gave him to return to the original notion of Britannia as the personification of Nymph of the Islands. I find this very evocative: the figure on the shore of Albion, the wooded island, owing something to the imagery of Spenser and Milton.
He has therefore chosen to depict her in a traditional seated pose, with a watchful lion at her feet and in the distance, a shoreline of cliffs. The obverse design of Queen Elizabeth II is designed by Ian Rank Broadley FRBS. These legal tender coins have been struck to proof quality using specially prepared dies and highly polished blanks.
