Francis Maria I della Rovere spent much of his reign either fighting for or being stripped of Urbino — Pope Leo X expelled him in 1516, handing the duchy to Lorenzo de' Medici, and it took six years and a change of pope before he recovered it. Small copper fractions like this half quattrino were the workhorse coinage of everyday transaction during those turbulent decades, circulating through a duchy whose political status shifted with each Roman conclave.
Francis Maria I della Rovere spent much of his reign either fighting for or being stripped of Urbino — Pope Leo X expelled him in 1516, handing the duchy to Lorenzo de' Medici, and it took six years and a change of pope before he recovered it. Small copper fractions like this half quattrino were the workhorse coinage of everyday transaction during those turbulent decades, circulating through a duchy whose political status shifted with each Roman conclave.