1/2 Baiocco Romano - Annibale Albani Sede Vacante

Clement XII died on February 6, 1740, after spending the last five years of his pontificate effectively blind and bedridden, leaving administrative affairs largely in the hands of his nephew. The Sede Vacante coinage issued under Cardinal Camerlengo Annibale Albani filled the legal interregnum before Prospero Lambertini was elected Benedict XIV on August 17 — a conclave that ran six months and required 255 ballots, one of the most protracted in the eighteenth century.

Albani's tenure as Camerlengo gave him brief authority to issue coinage in his own administrative capacity, a privilege jealously governed by long-standing curial protocol.