The Sienese Republic struck quattrini as the workhorse of everyday petty transactions — bread, small tolls, minor market exchange — and by 1503 the city was already deep into the political turbulence that would define its final decades before falling to Florence in 1555. Billon coinage of this period was chronically debased across the Italian city-states, and Siena was no exception, with the silver content of minor issues effectively negligible by the early sixteenth century.
MIR 534/9 distinguishes this emission within a closely sequenced group of quattrino varieties sharing overlapping magistracy periods.
The Sienese Republic struck quattrini as the workhorse of everyday petty transactions — bread, small tolls, minor market exchange — and by 1503 the city was already deep into the political turbulence that would define its final decades before falling to Florence in 1555. Billon coinage of this period was chronically debased across the Italian city-states, and Siena was no exception, with the silver content of minor issues effectively negligible by the early sixteenth century.
MIR 534/9 distinguishes this emission within a closely sequenced group of quattrino varieties sharing overlapping magistracy periods.