Doppio Quarto - Giovanni II Bentivoglio

Giovanni II Bentivoglio ruled Bologna not as a formal lord but as a de facto tyrant operating beneath the legal fiction of papal sovereignty — the city was technically under the Church, and he never claimed a title that would have forced a direct confrontation with Rome. This coin was struck just two years before his political position began its final unraveling, as French invasion and shifting alliances eroded the careful equilibrium he had maintained for decades. He was expelled in 1506 when Julius II, determined to reclaim the Papal States in full, entered Bologna without resistance.

The Doppio Quarto denomination itself is specific to the Bentivoglio monetary system in Bologna and does not map onto broader Italian denominational conventions of the period.