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Denaro - Dominic Gattilusio
| Issuer | Lordship of Lesbos (Mytilene) (Genoese colonies) |
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| Year | 1449-1459 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 1.0 g |
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| Obverse description | Within a beaded inner circle, a Palaeologan monogram composed of a central cross with B's and retrograde B's in each of the four angles, a device borrowed from Byzantine imperial iconography and adapted by the Gattilusio lords of Mytilene. The surrounding legend, rendered in uncial characters, reads around the periphery of the coin. The overall design is characteristic of the hybrid Greco-Genoese coinage produced in the Aegean lordships of the fifteenth century, combining Eastern Christian symbolism with Latin titulature. |
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
Dominic Gattilusio held Lesbos for barely a decade before the Ottomans under Mehmed II closed in. The island fell in 1462, just years after this issue, when Niccolò Gattilusio — Dominic's successor — was strangled on Mehmed's orders following his surrender of Mytilene. The Gattilusio family had held the island since 1355 as a Genoese fief granted by the Byzantine emperor John V Palaiologos, making their bronze small change an artifact of a remarkably long-lived Latin presence in the eastern Aegean.
Lunardi G15 is among the scarcer Gattilusio issues, reflecting the compressed timeframe of Dominic's rule.