La città, il signore, l’imperatore : segni di identità su monete medievali e moderne: alcuni esempi

Italian city coinages were usually identified by local symbols such as the fleurdelis for Florence or the city-gate for Genoa, while some other coinages continued traditional imperial epigraphic types (Milan). The images of local saints became more prominent on the silver “grossi” (13th century onwards). Between the late 13th and the early 14th centuries, new lords progressively gained power over vast Italian territories, usually through the imperial vicariate; some of their coins display a small eagle, others a heraldic device such as the “biscia” (snake) in Milan or the “scala” (ladder) in Verona. This paper intends to focus on how the new lords adapted or replaced local signs of identity and developed their own coin iconography. After an introduction by Lucia Travaini, Maila Chiaravalle deals with the Milanese coinage, illustrating the use of the images of St. Ambrose and the “biscia” over a long period. The “biscia”, a symbol of the Visconti family, first appeared as a secondary element in the legends of the earlier Visconti coinages, whose rule started in 1329; later, with Galeazzo II and Bernabò (1354-1378), the iconographic message became more complex as the Visconti power expanded even outside of Lombardy: the “biscia” became therefore more prominent in the field of largely used coins such as the “grosso”, “pegione” and “sesino”. Finally, Federico Pigozzo examines in detail two cases showing how different the fortune of a “stemma” could be: 1) in Verona, the personal “stemma” of Cangrande della Scala (1308-1329) disappeared rapidly from local coinage; 2) in Trento, the “stemma” adopted at the time of Bishop Nicolò of Brno (1338-1347) became the symbol of the Episcopal Principality of Trento and even of the Commune of Trento, and at present has been adopted as “stemma” of the “Provincia Autonoma di Trento”.