Powercoin have spent almost a decade playing around with some of the finest works of art in the world, from Michelangelo to Vincent van Gogh. Turning iconic works into mosaic, puzzles, and embroidery on their coins, they’ve created something quite unique in a numismatic market often over-served with fine art reproductions, and it’s been popular as a result.

Their latest series is another very unusual take on the theme, and they’ve chosen the most expensive piece of art ever sold to do so. The Salvatore Mundi, painted around 1499-1510, was purchased by a Saudi buyer in 2017, for a frankly ludicrous 450.3 million USD, even though there’s considerable doubt over exactly how much of the painting was actually undertaken by Leonardo da Vinci. The high-end art market is incredibly dodgy, and little exemplifies that more than this work.

That certainly doesn’t affect the coin, however, and this now iconic work has been given the bubble-wrap treatment. We view the Salvatore Mundi as if it were behind a sheet of bubble wrap. In two areas, the face and the right hand, we can see the bubble wrap has been torn, and the light reflections on the bubbles is absent here, with the colour intensified as a result. It shows a clever mastery of the way light and colour works, even on this subtle level.

The obverse continues the bubble theme, having the centre ‘peeled’ back to reveal the effigy of King Charles III. The coin comes presented in a latex-skin floating frame, complete with a custom insert COA. Overall, a highly inventive issue, continuing Powercoin’s fine history of putting a twist on the numismatic presentation of old masterpieces. Available now.