1 Teston - John Bartolomew Tizzone Saint Peter

Desana was among the smallest feudal lordships in the Po Valley — a county so minor it could barely sustain the pretension of minting silver testons at all. John Bartolomew Tizzone held the county during a period when northern Italy was being carved up between French and Imperial ambitions, and local lords issued prestige coinage partly to assert their nominal sovereignty in a region where that sovereignty was, in practice, entirely contingent on whichever great power was winning that season.

MIR 459 is genuinely rare. Desana's output was small even by the standards of minor Italian states, and few examples survive in any condition.