1 Osella - Giovanni Corner II

The osella was Venice's ceremonial new-year gift coin, distributed by the doge to members of the Signoria beginning in 1521 as a substitute for the live wildfowl — uccelli, hence the name — previously handed out from the ducal hunting grounds on the lagoon. By Corner's dogeship the tradition was over a century and a half old, and each doge commissioned a distinct type annually, making the series a de facto yearly medallic chronicle of the late Republic. Giovanni Corner II reigned from 1709 until his death in 1722, and this 1713 issue falls during the War of the Spanish Succession, when Venice was maintaining its precarious neutrality while the major powers carved up Habsburg territory around it.