Catalog
Ducat - John Baptist Orsini
| Issuer | Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (Hospitallers), Rhodes |
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| Year | 1467-1476 |
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| Technique | Hammered |
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| Obverse description | Saint John the Baptist, nimbate and robed, standing at left, extends the banner of the Order toward the Grand Master Giovanni Battista Orsini, who kneels in adoration facing him to the right. The investiture scene is rendered in the Gothic hammered tradition, with fine drapery detail on both figures. A circular Latin legend surrounds the composition within a beaded border. |
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| Reverse script | Latin |
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| Additional information |
John Baptist Orsini served as Grand Master of the Hospitallers at Rhodes during a period of acute Ottoman pressure following Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The Order was effectively a military buffer state operating on borrowed time, and its gold coinage — struck to ducat standards to facilitate trade and mercenary payments across the eastern Mediterranean — needed to pass muster in markets dominated by Venetian and Byzantine weight conventions. Orsini's tenure ended with his death in 1476, just six years before the great Ottoman siege of 1480 that his successor Pierre d'Aubusson would have to survive.