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Important Numismatics collection from a Noble Italian family

Thursday 12 March 2026 e Friday 13 March 2026, 02:30 PM • Milan

392

Oselle di Venezia

NICOLO' CONTARINI, Doge XCVII (1630-1631) – Osella, year I, 1630.

Starting bid

€ 300

Sold

€ 671

The price includes buyer's premium

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Information

in silver
9.28 gr. - Diam. 35.00 mm.

Obverse: Saint Mark seated on a throne, offering the banner to the kneeling Doge, who receives it in his hand. In the exergue are the initials VM (Urbano Malipiero, farmer); - Reverse: The Doge kneeling before the portal of a Renaissance church; above the portal is the Virgin and Child.

Montenegro 1499. CNI 83. Paolucci II 113. Very rare.

MB.

"The plague that the health tribunal had feared might enter the Milanese area with the German troops had indeed entered, as is well known; and it is equally well known that it did not stop there, but invaded and depopulated a good part of Italy."

With these words Alessandro Manzoni opens chapter XXXI of his masterpiece The Betrothed, the one in which he recounts the tragedy of the plague that struck Milan starting at the end of 1629, known to most as the “Manzonian plague”.

Following the outbreak of the War of Succession of Mantua and Montferrat, the imperial troops composed of the lansquenets spread the disease in the Duchy of Milan, which was initially its epicenter.

In 1630 the city of Venice was also hit by the devastating bubonic plague epidemic which caused the death of over 40,000 inhabitants, about a third of the population.

By order of Doge Nicolò Contarini, Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo, and a decree of the Senate, it was decided to erect a votive church dedicated to Our Lady of Health, invoking her intercession for the cessation of the disease.

Designed to be built at the confluence of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, the project was entrusted to architect Baldassarre Longhena. The work, begun in 1631, was completed in 1687, becoming one of the city's most evocative symbols.