Genovino / Ducat - Raphael Adorno As 22d doge

Raphael Adorno held the dogeship under conditions of near-constant factional violence — Genoa's Ghibelline and Guelf factions had made the office functionally unstable for decades, and Adorno himself was the product of a family that had seized and lost power repeatedly across the preceding generation. His tenure from 1443 to 1447 coincided with Milanese pressure on the city under Filippo Maria Visconti, who treated Genoese autonomy as a negotiable inconvenience. That the mint produced gold of this type at all reflects the republic's stubborn insistence on commercial continuity regardless of political turbulence.

The genovino and Venetian ducat had long competed as the dominant gold currencies of Mediterranean trade. By the 1440s, Venice had largely won that contest.