20 Roubles Francisk Skorina's Way. Venice

Francisk Skorina, the Belarusian polymath who produced the first printed books in the Eastern Slavic world in the early sixteenth century, spent formative years in Venice — then the undisputed capital of European printing. He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Padua in 1512, an institution close enough to Venice that the city shaped his intellectual and commercial understanding of the book trade before he returned east to establish his press in Prague and later Vilnius.

This piece is part of a multi-coin series tracing Skorina's European journey. The oxidized finish is intentional, lending the surface a deliberately aged character suited to the subject.