1/4 écu 'vertugadin' - Louis XV

The "vertugadin" nickname derives from the pronounced rounded truncation at the base of the young Louis XV's portrait — a shape contemporaries likened to the vertugadin, the hooped underskirt fashionable a century earlier. This brief issue spans only the Regency period under Philippe d'Orléans, when France's royal mint was simultaneously navigating the catastrophic monetary experiments of John Law, whose Mississippi Company scheme was already destabilizing the livre system these coins nominally anchored.

Dy 1653 encompasses multiple mint marks across the three-year window. Paris output dominates surviving examples, but provincial mint pieces from this type are considerably scarcer and frequently overlooked.