1 Soldino, 4 Tornesi

The soldino had been Venice's workhorse small change for centuries before this copper issue, but by the early seventeenth century the Republic was struggling to maintain a credible fiduciary coinage against chronic shortages and widespread counterfeiting of petty denominations. The equation of 1 soldino to 4 tornesi was a formal valuation peg rather than a new denomination — an administrative attempt to rationalize the relationship between Venetian and mainland south Italian monetary units circulating simultaneously in Adriatic trade.