The cavallotto was Genoa's answer to the proliferation of small silver coinage flooding Mediterranean trade circuits in the sixteenth century. The "second phase" designation distinguishes issues struck after a documented reform of the type — the earlier cavallotti had suffered chronic underweight complaints from merchants, and the revision was imposed in part to restore confidence among Genoese bankers whose credibility was already under strain from the city's complex entanglement with Spanish Habsburg debt financing.
Genoa's mint during this period operated under the Officium Monete, which kept unusually detailed records — some of which survive in the Archivio di Stato di Genova — making die-study of this series more tractable than most Italian civic coinages of comparable obscurity.
The cavallotto was Genoa's answer to the proliferation of small silver coinage flooding Mediterranean trade circuits in the sixteenth century. The "second phase" designation distinguishes issues struck after a documented reform of the type — the earlier cavallotti had suffered chronic underweight complaints from merchants, and the revision was imposed in part to restore confidence among Genoese bankers whose credibility was already under strain from the city's complex entanglement with Spanish Habsburg debt financing.
Genoa's mint during this period operated under the Officium Monete, which kept unusually detailed records — some of which survive in the Archivio di Stato di Genova — making die-study of this series more tractable than most Italian civic coinages of comparable obscurity.