20 Euro - Beatrix M.C. Escher

This piece was issued to mark the centenary of Escher's birth — he was born in Leeuwarden on June 17, 1898. The Dutch mint had a history of producing artist commemoratives in silver, but Escher presented an unusual problem: his work is so compositionally dense that any adaptation to a coin format risks either oversimplifying the imagery or producing a die too intricate to strike cleanly at volume. The .800 fineness rather than the more common .925 reflects the standard Dutch commemorative silver specification of the period.