Presentation in the Temple by Ambrogio Lorenzetti
The easter is close, so it’s time to look some of the easter stamps. For the next 4-5 days I’ll be showcasing easter souvenir sheets from 1970’s Equatorial Guinea (also known as “dictator Nguema era”) each day. I know most collectors categorize these as “bogus” since there’s no proof of real usage or legimite origin of these stamps; most likely they are right. I think Michel is currently the only major catalogue providing full listing of these… But bogus or not, IMO these make suprisingly fascinating and nice looking area to collect.
Equatorial Guinea 1973 easter souvenir sheet. Michel Bl.#38, catalogue value 2€
The sheet image shows Presentation in the Temple by Ambrogio Lorenzetti from year 1342. The signed and dated panel was brought in 1822 from the Spedaletto di Monna Agnese at Siena to the Gallery of the Academy in Florence, and from there to the Uffizi in 1913. Only six documented works of Ambrogio Lorenzetti have survived to our days.
Common nominator for Equatorial Guinea stamps and sheets of this era are printed CTO cancels – most of the time with faulty cancellation dates (if Michel catalogue issue dates information is to be trusted)….
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Strictly speaking, these stamps are not bogus, since they were printed by order of the government of Equatorial Guinea.
Of course they were sold totally to collectors and almost none of them was really used on mail. If you can read Spanish, there´s something about it here:
http://albumdeestampillas.blogspot.com/2009/04/guinea-ecuatorial.html
Hi Pablo,
thanks to online translation services, your page was very easy to read. It was very interesting piece of information.
I must say it would be very interesting to see a postally used copies of Nguema era topical issues. I’m pretty sure that some do exist, but they must be truly scarce.
Do you have any knowledge about the cancellations used on Equatorial Guinea stamps? I have always wondered why they are outdated. For example the cancellation on this sheet states it was cancelled in year 1970, but Michel states that the sheet was issued in year 1973.
-keijo-