2 Ducats Spanish type

Zwolle's gold ducat issues of the late sixteenth century were produced under the monetary ordinances of the Habsburg Netherlands, which standardized the ducat's fineness across the provinces while allowing individual cities and lordships to strike their own types. The city exercised this right assertively during the 1590s, a decade when the Dutch Revolt had fractured normal trade networks and reliable gold coinage carried a premium precisely because so much silver circulation was disrupted or debased by the warring parties.

The two-ducat denomination was never common from any provincial mint of this period. Delmonte's two separate catalogue numbers for this type suggest die variation between emission runs rather than a single uniform issue.