1 Testone - Ranuccio II

Ranuccio II ruled Piacenza as a Farnese duke through a period of grinding fiscal pressure, the duchy increasingly dependent on Spanish patronage while its finances were quietly strangled by decades of court expenditure and military obligations. The testone denomination itself was by this point archaic — larger silver multiples had long displaced it for serious commerce — yet small Italian states continued striking testonato-weight pieces partly as declarations of dynastic presence and partly to service local wage payments.

Ranuccio II died in 1694, and the Farnese line itself expired with his son Francesco in 1731, after which the duchy passed to the Bourbons.