Quattrino - Rodolfo Bologna type

Castiglione delle Stiviere was a tiny imperial fief in the Gonzaga orbit, and Rodolfo Gonzaga's right to strike billon coinage in the 1580s depended entirely on his status as a prince of the Holy Roman Empire — a dignity his branch of the family had secured only in 1577. The quattrino was the workhorse of small transactions in northern Italian market towns, and local lords minted it partly out of practical necessity, partly to assert the tangible reality of their sovereignty over subjects who might otherwise forget they had a feudal master at all.

CNI IV documents at least seven die combinations for this type, suggesting continuous if modest production across the full span of Rodolfo's rule before his death in 1593.