Great Grossi! (15th Century Florence)

Not my field, but beautiful!

Beautiful coins!

I typically avoid Italy because it's such a monster (size, scope, language, &c.) and I only have so much time & capital available. I'd love to delve deeper into the coinage, though.

Thanks for comments, all!

While, on the one hand, Florentine coinage during the Republic (till mid-1500s) can be considered a bit monotonous (lily/Saint John on every coin produced), these two examples show a couple of interesting differences.

The gold florin was produced for something like 300 years with John standing as in the first coin. But the silver grossos (grossi) struck between 1315 and 1454 mostly show him seated, almost as though enthroned. I'm not really sure why, since John was a pretty humble guy according to most biblical descriptions. Maybe the Florentines felt his representation needed to be elevated to reflect the stature of their city?

Also, the later coin (the first one) shows a distinctly 3-D halo, unlike the 2-dimensional halos of earlier medieval times, I suppose reflecting advances in renaissance art.

Finally, I love the chicken (capon for Capponi) as the mint master's mark on the 1424 coin.

Nice to see it here.

@spence, I will give this a shot, 90% confidence that the explanation is good.

As best I can tell, your grosso is indeed from 1479, and not 1487.

The grosso with John standing, beaded halo (they call it "pearled" in Italian), and holding a ribbon below his right arm with the word ECCE is MIR 62, struck from 1461-1483. That should make your coin the same as this one attributed as Biaggi 801, and 1st semester 1479, Bertoldo Corsini:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=9818700

To muddy the waters further, CNI put this mintmaster 6 months earlier, 2d semester 1478. So maybe MIR(Varesi) found that CNI's dating was off a bit.

The grosso with John standing, and the more 3-D halo, and WITHOUT the ribbon runs from 1483-1487, MIR 64. The exact same mint master coat of arms is used 1st semester 1487, but it is either a different Bertoldo Corsini, or the same guy hired back for a second term (here he is called Bertoldo di Bartolomeo di Bertoldo di Filippo Corsini, which might make him the grandson of the 1479 Bertoldo Corsini): https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10132243

I will add that I think Numista had the wrong photo for this later type until quite recently.

So I think you had the misfortune of nabbing an example that is especially confusing to attribute (I think there are some misattributed examples out on acsearch, which also doesn't help).

Certain types of records apparently exist, because the mint master's names are known for much of the 15th and parts of the 14th for Florence, and to a lesser extent for Venice in the 15th.

Numista has been adding examples of grossos struck under the 15th century mintmasters, but it's not complete (yet). They are found under the main types as listed in the MIR (Varesi) catalog (MIR 58-MIR 64), in the Comments sections for each type.

Or, if you open up the volume of CNI dedicated to Florence, they are all in there, thugh it seems later scholarship (remember CNI is about 100 years old) has moved some of them by 6 months.

Nice examples!


On the first pass I read as beheaded halo and was like, "Sure, I can see it is going off the edge." Then I realized that was not right and read it again.