1 Zecchino - Pius VI Oval shield

Pius VI — born Giovanni Angelo Braschi — came to the pontificate in 1775 after a conclave that lasted nearly five months, one of the longest in the eighteenth century. His reign would prove equally protracted and ultimately catastrophic: Napoleon's forces eventually took him prisoner in 1798, and he died in French captivity at Valence the following year. The zecchino issues of his early papacy, before the financial strain of revolutionary wars reached Rome, were struck with the meticulous gold purity that Venice had established as the continental benchmark for the denomination centuries earlier.

The Papal mint at Rome was adapting Venetian zecchino conventions to its own sovereign coinage — the oval shield reverse being a distinctly Roman variation on that tradition.