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 - Urban VIII S. Peter and S. Paul
| Issuer | Papal States |
|---|---|
| Year | 1628-1631 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Silver (.9167) |
| 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 | Latin |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Saints Peter and Paul standing facing, each depicted in full figure. Saint Peter holds the keys of heaven in his right hand and a book in his left, while Saint Paul grasps a sword in his left hand. The mintmaster's initials appear in the exergue at the feet of the two apostles. The legend naming the two saints and the mint city runs around the circumference. |
| 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 | Log in to see details |
| Additional information |
Urban VIII — born Maffeo Barberini — was elected pope in 1623 and proved one of the most politically ambitious pontiffs of the seventeenth century, entangling the Holy See in the costly Castro War and maintaining a lavish court that strained papal finances considerably. The testone denomination had been a workhorse of central Italian silver coinage since the fifteenth century, and Urban's mint at Rome struck these across several die marriages, accounting for the Muntoni sequence spanning numbers 67 through 69.
Urban famously had Galileo condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 — two years after this issue closed — despite having been his personal patron earlier in the pontificate.