Andrea Gritti was elected Doge in 1523 at the age of sixty-eight, an unlikely outcome given his years spent as a Venetian spy in Ottoman Constantinople — where he had fathered several children with a Turkish woman and maintained close enough ties to Süleyman the Magnificent that his loyalty was periodically questioned. The Scudo d'oro was Venice's answer to the Florentine ducat's dominance in Mediterranean trade, and Gritti's sixteen-year dogeship, the longest of the sixteenth century, means his issues are among the more frequently encountered of the type.
He died in office in 1538, the year before the series closed.
Andrea Gritti was elected Doge in 1523 at the age of sixty-eight, an unlikely outcome given his years spent as a Venetian spy in Ottoman Constantinople — where he had fathered several children with a Turkish woman and maintained close enough ties to Süleyman the Magnificent that his loyalty was periodically questioned. The Scudo d'oro was Venice's answer to the Florentine ducat's dominance in Mediterranean trade, and Gritti's sixteen-year dogeship, the longest of the sixteenth century, means his issues are among the more frequently encountered of the type.
He died in office in 1538, the year before the series closed.