1 Piastra - Clemente XI Bust - Papal arms

Clemente XI — Giovanni Francesco Albani — is best remembered numismatically for his prolific coinage program, but politically his reign was defined by catastrophe. The 1715 issue falls squarely within the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession, during which the Pope's miscalculated support for Philip V of Anjou led to the bull Unigenitus controversy and strained relations with virtually every major Catholic power simultaneously. The Papal States were diplomatically isolated when this piastra was struck.

The Berman 2385 attribution distinguishes this as the bust-type issue, one of several piastra variants Clemente XI produced — a reflection of the mint's habit of running multiple reverse and obverse pairings within a single year rather than standardizing production runs.