5 Euro Michelangelo

Issued under Italy's ongoing "Arte Italiana" collector series, which has systematically worked through the country's canonical artists and monuments since the early 2000s. The Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato has produced enough entries in this format that the series itself has become a collecting category — dealers now track completions rather than individual pieces.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni died in Rome in 1564, just weeks before his 89th birthday, still working on designs for St. Peter's Basilica.