Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
1 Testone - Clement XI
| Issuer | Papal States |
|---|---|
| Year | 1707-1708 |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | A standing allegorical figure of Charity, draped in flowing robes, dominates the central field, her gaze directed upward and her arms extended to embrace three small children gathered about her. One child kneels at her left, clutching her garment, while two others appear at her right in attitudes of supplication and play. The exergue below the ground line contains the mint initials E·F within a small decorative cartouche. The circumferential legend is distributed across the upper field, separated by stars, all within a beaded border and a milled edge characteristic of Roman papal coinage of the period. |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | 1707 - VII - 1708 - VIII - |
| Additional information |
Clement XI issued this testone during one of the most politically disastrous stretches of his pontificate — the years in which his 1713 bull Unigenitus was still forming, but his temporal authority was already collapsing under pressure from the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1709, Joseph I seized the Papal States' northern territories after Clement briefly recognized Philip V as king of Spain, a diplomatic miscalculation that cost him Comacchio and Parma for years.
The testone denomination itself was already archaic by this point, a holdover from the 16th-century Papal monetary system that Rome stubbornly retained long after other Italian states had rationalized their coinages.