1 Scudo - Odardo Farnese

Odoardo Farnese inherited the duchies of Parma and Piacenza in 1622 at age fifteen, and his early coinage reflects the ambitions of a minor Italian ruler determined to project authority disproportionate to his territory. His later decision to align with France against the Habsburgs in the Wars of Castro would prove catastrophic — but these scudi predate that overreach, struck during a brief window of relative stability before the duchy's finances collapsed under military adventurism. The Dav EC II reference places this among a small cluster of issues that numismatists use to reconstruct Odoardo's monetary chronology, as documentary mint records from Parma for this period are fragmentary.