Alfonso II Gonzaga ruled Novellara and Bagnolo as a minor imperial fief of negligible strategic weight, yet the counts maintained the privilege of coinage throughout the seventeenth century — a right jealously guarded even as the county's actual political influence contracted. The sesino was the workhorse denomination of small northern Italian fiefs, circulating locally in a region already saturated with competing small copper from Mantua, Reggio, and Mirandola.
MIR EM#881 places this squarely among the least-documented Gonzaga collateral issues. Alfonso II's reign of over three decades accounts for the relative frequency with which these turn up, though fine survivors are genuinely scarce.
Alfonso II Gonzaga ruled Novellara and Bagnolo as a minor imperial fief of negligible strategic weight, yet the counts maintained the privilege of coinage throughout the seventeenth century — a right jealously guarded even as the county's actual political influence contracted. The sesino was the workhorse denomination of small northern Italian fiefs, circulating locally in a region already saturated with competing small copper from Mantua, Reggio, and Mirandola.
MIR EM#881 places this squarely among the least-documented Gonzaga collateral issues. Alfonso II's reign of over three decades accounts for the relative frequency with which these turn up, though fine survivors are genuinely scarce.