Filippo Maria Visconti spent much of his reign fighting to reassemble the Duchy his father Gian Galeazzo had built and his brother Giovanni Maria had nearly destroyed. When he came to power in 1412, Milan's coinage was in disorder — the monetary system had suffered alongside the political chaos of the intervening years. The grosso issued under his authority restored a degree of monetary credibility at a moment when that credibility was itself a political instrument.
The .572 fineness places this well below the original grosso standard introduced centuries earlier, a quiet arithmetic record of long-term debasement across the north Italian minting tradition.
Filippo Maria Visconti spent much of his reign fighting to reassemble the Duchy his father Gian Galeazzo had built and his brother Giovanni Maria had nearly destroyed. When he came to power in 1412, Milan's coinage was in disorder — the monetary system had suffered alongside the political chaos of the intervening years. The grosso issued under his authority restored a degree of monetary credibility at a moment when that credibility was itself a political instrument.
The .572 fineness places this well below the original grosso standard introduced centuries earlier, a quiet arithmetic record of long-term debasement across the north Italian minting tradition.