Francesco Sforza seized Milan in 1450 after a two-year interlude in which the city had declared itself the Ambrosian Republic following the death of the last Visconti duke. His early coinage was therefore as much a political instrument as a practical one — establishing dynastic legitimacy where none had existed by hereditary right. The billon imperiale, a denomination with deep Milanese roots predating the Sforza entirely, gave him a ready vehicle for that claim.
MIR LOM 863 catalogues several die marriages across the IV#12–14 sequence, with minor variation in the arrangement of the ducal titles.
Francesco Sforza seized Milan in 1450 after a two-year interlude in which the city had declared itself the Ambrosian Republic following the death of the last Visconti duke. His early coinage was therefore as much a political instrument as a practical one — establishing dynastic legitimacy where none had existed by hereditary right. The billon imperiale, a denomination with deep Milanese roots predating the Sforza entirely, gave him a ready vehicle for that claim.
MIR LOM 863 catalogues several die marriages across the IV#12–14 sequence, with minor variation in the arrangement of the ducal titles.