La Serenissima Repubblica di Genova

Sale: Triton X, Lot: 1057. Estimate $100.  Closing Date: Monday, 8 January 2007.  Sold For $250. This amount does not include the buyer’s fee.

ITALY, Genova. Republic. 1139-1339. AR Grosso da 4 denari (1.39 g, 8h). Struck circa 1272. + I • A • N V • A •, stylized castle / CVNRADI REX :, cross pattée. Cf. CNI III 85; Lunardi 3 (2nd type); Varesi 13; Biaggi 837. Good VF, toned.

An important northern Italian port city, Genova (Lat. Ianua) survived the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and by the tenth century was still strong enough to resist the attack of a Fatimid fleet and then counterattack under the leadership of the bishop and of the local lords. Maritime commerce was the city’s dominant activity. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Genova played a leading role in the nascent European commercial revolution. As a major naval power in the Mediterranean and a mercantile enterprise rivaled only by Venice, its commercial network spread to the Levant as well as many northern European cities. Such was Genova’s strategic and economic importance that in 1193 Konrad II von Hohenstaufen, Duke of Swabia and brother of the Holy Roman emperor, Heinrich IV, officially gave the city the right to strike coins. Genova is also notable as the birthplace of the Grimaldis, the ruling family of Monaco since 1297 when its founder, Francisco Grimaldi siezed Monte Carlo disguised as a monk. In 1298 the celebrated Venetian traveller Marco Polo was captured by Genova, then at war with Venezia, and sent to prison where he met a popular writer of romance stories, Rustichello. Marco reported his twenty-five year Asian adventure to his fellow prisoner and their combined work became one of the most influential books in history, Il Milione ("The Million" or The Travels of Marco Polo)

As a result of Genovese participation in the Crusades, the Republic founded self-governing commercial colonies all around the Mediterranean coast, many of which produced coins. However, an alliance with the Byzantine Empire under the Treaty of Ninfeo in 1261, which allowed for the construction of Genovese outposts in Byzantine territory, amply compensated the Republic when the crusader states along with their Genovese enclaves collapsed in the late thirteenth century. As a result, new markets now opened up as Genova expanded its influence into the Black Sea. Pera (modern Beyoglu), the Genovese independent suburb of Constantinople, gradually outstripped the Byzantine capital in economic development, and Kaffa (modern Feodosiya) became the capital of a broad stretch of the Crimean coast ruled by the Genovese. Many Aegean islands now became independent Genovese principalities, while Genovese soldiers served with distinction though the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Until 1339, when the first Doge was elected, Genova was in almost constant political strife.Managed as a business enterprise, or compagnia for the benefit of the ruling families and merchants, the original system of having several annually elected governing consuls. This system gradually changed, and by the 1300s the "captains of the People" were serving nearly unlimited terms, supported by Genova's numerous trading guilds. As well, the ruling families like the Spinola, Fieschi, Grimaldi, and Doria were constantly struggling for power, although this never seriously affected the Republic's profits and standard of living. Indeed, Genoa was ruled like a business, and by the fourteenth century, it had among the best standard of living of any city in Europe, in addition to initiating massive civic pride projects like wharves, bridges, churches and palaces. Most notable during this time was the appointment in 1257 of Guglielmo Boccanegra as captain, who became during his rule a virtual dictator. After 1339 with the election of Simone Boccanegra, Genovese doges were elected on the Venetian model in an attempt to achieve a solution to the problems caused by this earlier form of government.

In 1528, after a period of successive French, Milanese and Spanish overlordship, Andrea Doria, scion of an old noble Genovese family, forced through a new constitution and restored his city to orderly government under biennial doges and an oligarchy of the old and new noble merchants. As the Imperial Admiral he also made Genova politically a satellite of Spain, in an attempt to ensure that Genova would be a privileged exploiter of the vast Spanish possessions in the New World, which had been accidentally discovered in 1492 by the celebrated Genovese navigator Cristoforo Colombo. The result was a partial economic recovery in the 16th and 17th centuries and the issue of multiple denominational silver and gold coinage. In 1637 the coinage was reformed by replacing the obverse type depicting the castle with that of the Madonna and child and abandoning the name of Conrad II. This new obverse type celebrates the pronouncement of the Madonna as Regina di Genova (Queen of Genoa) and the acquisition of the kingdom of Corsica by the maritime republic. As the fortunes of Spain and the Italian states declined, so did Genoa's. By the mid-18th century trade had sunk to its lowest level and by the Treaty of Versailles in 1768, the republic ceded to France its last overseas possession, Corsica. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the republic saw its neutrality violated by both sides and in 1797, under Napoleon Bonaparte's pressure, it was transformed into the Ligurian Republic and after 1815 consigned by the British to the kingdom of Sardinia and the house of Savoy, the nucleus about which the United Kingdom of Italy was formed.