20 Dollars Ecstasy of Saint Teresa

Palau has built one of the more aggressive bullion-art programs of any small Pacific issuer, regularly licensing European religious and classical imagery for large-format silver releases aimed squarely at the collector market rather than circulation. This piece references Bernini's 1652 marble sculpture in the Cornaro Chapel, Rome — a work commissioned by Cardinal Federico Cornaro that sparked controversy even in its own century for the ambiguity of its devotional intensity.

At 155.5 g these issues are essentially sculptural objects sold on the secondary market at multiples of melt. Palau's GDP makes any pretense of domestic monetary use implausible.