1/2 Sovrano - Joseph II

Joseph II issued this coin as part of a sweeping monetary reform aimed at standardizing Habsburg coinage across his Italian territories — a project inseparable from his broader Josephinist program of administrative centralization that alienated Milan's patrician class nearly as thoroughly as his ecclesiastical policies. The Sovrano and its half were intended to replace a chaotic patchwork of local denominations, though the reform outlasted Joseph himself by only months.

He died in February 1790, and Leopold II suspended much of his brother's reformist agenda almost immediately upon succession.