Andrea Fulvio’s Illustrium imagines and the Beginnings of Classical Archaeology is a study of the book acknowledged by contemporaries to be the first attempt (1517) to publish artifacts from Classical Antiquity, in the form of a chronology of portraits appearing on coins. The study determines which represented coins correspond to genuine, ancient coins, and the degree of their accuracy in reproducing the legends, and the iconography and style of the originals. The study then addresses the methodology by which Fulvio attempted to exploit coins as historical documents, intersecting with humanist literary and historical studies of ancient Rome, the reception of ancient artifacts, and the response of visual artists to ancient portrait renderings.