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1 Thaler - Ludovico II and Margherita di Foix
| Issuer | Marquisate of Saluzzo |
|---|---|
| Year | 1503 |
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| Currency | Testone |
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| Obverse description | Conjoined facing busts of Marquis Ludovico II, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and the collar of the Order of St. Michael, and his consort Margherita di Foix, veiled, presented in a formal frontal effigy typical of late-medieval Italian hammered coinage. The busts are rendered in a stylised portrait manner characteristic of early sixteenth-century Piedmontese die-cutting. The surrounding field carries a Latin legend. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | A crowned double-headed eagle displayed with wings spread, facing left, bearing on its breast a shield party per pale with the arms of Saluzzo (azure, a bend or) and Foix (or, three pales of gules). The eagle is rendered in the heraldic style common to northern Italian Renaissance coinage. The design is enclosed by a beaded inner circle, with the Latin legend disposed around the outer field. |
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| Additional information |
Saluzzo occupied an uncomfortable geographic and political position in the early sixteenth century — a small alpine marquisate squeezed between the Duchy of Milan, the Duchy of Savoy, and an increasingly aggressive French crown. Ludovico II had secured his position partly through his marriage to Margherita di Foix, a union with significant dynastic implications given the Foix family's ties to both French and Navarrese nobility. The joint portrait issue reflects that alliance directly.
The Thaler format itself was barely years old when this was struck — Tyrol's Guldengroschen of 1486 had only recently established the large silver format that Saluzzo was here adopting. For a marquisate of this size to produce such a coin signals deliberate political ambition rather than mere monetary necessity.