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1000 Lire
| Issuer | Banca d'Italia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1896-1899 |
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| Composition | Paper |
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| Reverse description | Elaborate baroque-style vignette printed in red-brown and salmon tones on cream paper, with a large blank oval reserve at left and a bold red intaglio profile portrait of a female head in right profile occupying the right portion of the central panel. The denomination '1000 LIRE' appears twice in the centre, flanked by a guilloche underprint and a small vignette of putti. Tall allegorical female figures in classical robes stand as pilasters at each lateral margin, while the upper register carries a detailed architectural scene with further allegorical figures; at the lower centre a circular medallion contains the interlaced 'BI' monogram of the Banca d'Italia. |
| Reverse lettering | 1000 LIRE 1000 LIRE ART. 2 DELLA LEGGE 10 AGOSTO 1893 N. 449 |
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| Comments |
Barbetti and Ballarini were the dominant creative partnership behind Banca d'Italia's late nineteenth-century high-denomination engraving work, and this 1000 Lire sits at the peak of that collaboration. The Officina Carte-Valori, operating under what would later consolidate into the Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, had by this point developed a distinctly Italian intaglio idiom — denser and more baroque in its tonal work than the English school of the same period.
At this denomination, the note circulated almost exclusively between banks and major commercial houses. Ordinary retail transactions rarely touched a 1000 Lire note in 1890s Italy, which is precisely why surviving examples with genuine handling wear are the more historically honest specimens.