Pietro Leopoldo struck this issue in the final months before abdicating the Tuscan throne to succeed his brother Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor — he departed Florence in March 1790 and never returned. The Francescone series had been his workhorse trade coin throughout a two-decade reign that saw Tuscany become something of a laboratory for Enlightenment fiscal reform, including the abolition of torture and the world's first modern penal code.
The 1790 date therefore marks an accidental terminus: coins struck that year were not a planned farewell issue but simply the last production run before the machinery of succession interrupted everything.
Pietro Leopoldo struck this issue in the final months before abdicating the Tuscan throne to succeed his brother Joseph II as Holy Roman Emperor — he departed Florence in March 1790 and never returned. The Francescone series had been his workhorse trade coin throughout a two-decade reign that saw Tuscany become something of a laboratory for Enlightenment fiscal reform, including the abolition of torture and the world's first modern penal code.
The 1790 date therefore marks an accidental terminus: coins struck that year were not a planned farewell issue but simply the last production run before the machinery of succession interrupted everything.