Grossetto - Jacob Gattilusio Cross, IACOBUS

Jacob II Gattilusio inherited Lesbos in 1404 following the death of his father Francesco II, ruling until his own death in 1428 under conditions of increasingly precarious Genoese influence in the Aegean. The Gattilusi family had held Lesbos since 1355 as a reward from Byzantine Emperor John V Palaiologos — whose daughter Maria, Jacob's grandmother, had married Francesco I — making their legitimacy a hybrid of Latin mercantile ambition and Byzantine dynastic favor.

The grossetto series of Mytilene reflects the lord's need to maintain a local silver currency in a region where Ottoman pressure was already reshaping regional trade networks. Lunardi's classification places this type firmly within Jacob II's reign on stylistic grounds.