A Face on the Silver, Gold in the Coffer
For the first time, a realistic profile of the king appeared on French coinage. This declaration of royal authority, which began with a single silver coin, would eventually lead to a ransom for a lost war and funding for a brilliant culture.
The Silver Coin Bearing the King's Face
For a long time during the Middle Ages, the king depicted on French coinage was a conventional, stylized figure seated on a throne. It was not a realistic, living face. This tradition was broken by a heavy silver coin called the teston. The name comes from the Italian *testone*, meaning "large head".
In 1514, the flan of this silver coin, introduced by edict by Louis XII, bore the king's realistic profile. The king, who had become Duke of Milan in 1504, brought the portrait style popular in Italy back to his home country. Placing the king's face on the coinage was also a declaration of royal authority—of whose money this was.
It is often said that Francis I was the first to have the king's face engraved. However, this is incorrect. It was Louis XII who began it. It was during the reign of Francis I that the beauty of the portraiture reached its zenith.
The Captive King and the Gold Coin of the Sun
Around the time the beauty of the portraiture reached its peak, its subject, Francis I, was defeated in war. February 24, 1525, the Battle of Pavia. It was the decisive day of the long Italian Wars. The king, his horse shot from under him, was taken prisoner and imprisoned in Madrid. It is said that the king wrote to his mother that all was lost save honour and his life, which was safe.
Eventually, his two young sons were sent to Spain as hostages in their father's place, and a peace treaty was concluded in 1529. The price for the princes' return was set at two million écus. The unit used to count the king's ransom at this time was the gold écu with a sun, the *écu d'or au soleil*. This gold coin, born in 1475, featured a small sun above a shield and remained the basic form of French gold coinage.
The Treasury and the Palace
Behind the defeat and the ransom, the same king was moving an astonishing amount of wealth. In March 1523, Francis I established a state treasury called the *Épargne*. It was a system for consolidating the revenues and tax receipts from the royal domains, which had previously been scattered in various places, into a single coffer. This treasury was housed in the Louvre Palace in 1532.
It was not only taxes that filled the treasury. The sale of offices, contributions from the church, donations from cities, and forced loans to officials. This wealth was then poured into the construction of magnificent châteaux. In about fifteen years, he built or renovated seven châteaux, including Chambord, Blois, and Fontainebleau. Painters were invited from Italy, among them Leonardo da Vinci.
On Both Appearance and Flow
A face on the silver, gold in the coffer. The Renaissance monarchy demonstrated in a visible way, in terms of both the appearance and the flow of money, that the king was the center of finance.
A brilliant culture was born from the purse of a king burdened by the debt of a lost war. At the bottom of this financial resource lay the burdens of the common people, such as taxes and the sale of offices.
Eventually, the contents of that purse, though no one was fighting a war, would be quietly diluted by silver from across the sea.
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Everything in these pieces comes from the material itself.