1/2 Scudo - Alfonso II Early bust

Alfonso II d'Este assumed the ducal throne in 1559 and almost immediately confronted the question of dynastic legitimacy — he had no male heir, and Ferrara was a papal fief whose reversion to Rome was a real political threat. The coinage of his early reign carries an urgency that later issues lack. This half scudo belongs to the first type, distinguished by the younger portrait, before the dies were updated sometime in the later 1560s.

Ferrara's mint was among the more active in northern Italy during this period, but Alfonso's personal finances were perpetually strained by his patronage of Tasso and the Este court's extraordinary cultural expenditure.