Genoa's 2 Lire of this period circulated during decades of acute political pressure on the republic — Spanish hegemony over northern Italy had long subordinated Genoese financial interests to Habsburg military funding, with the city's banking families effectively underwriting Castilian imperial debt throughout the seventeenth century. The republic's own coinage often functioned as a secondary concern to the bill-of-exchange networks the Genoese had mastered.
KM#148 spans a remarkably long production window across multiple doge administrations, making die attribution a serious scholarly exercise. The .889 fineness held consistent where other Italian states were quietly debasing.
Genoa's 2 Lire of this period circulated during decades of acute political pressure on the republic — Spanish hegemony over northern Italy had long subordinated Genoese financial interests to Habsburg military funding, with the city's banking families effectively underwriting Castilian imperial debt throughout the seventeenth century. The republic's own coinage often functioned as a secondary concern to the bill-of-exchange networks the Genoese had mastered.
KM#148 spans a remarkably long production window across multiple doge administrations, making die attribution a serious scholarly exercise. The .889 fineness held consistent where other Italian states were quietly debasing.