Catalog
20 Soles
| Issuer | Banco La Providencia |
|---|---|
| Year | 1877 |
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| Value | 20 Soles |
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| Obverse description | At left, a classical allegorical female figure stands alongside a cherub amid floral elements, rendered in fine intaglio engraving. A central vignette presents a pastoral Andean scene with llamas and cattle, framed by ornate guilloche scrollwork, with the large green underprint denomination 'VEINTE' spanning the lower centre. The upper legend reads 'PERU / BANCO LA PROVIDENCIA' with the denomination '20' repeated in each corner, and the text 'VEINTE SOLES' appears on a panel below the central vignette; at lower right a caduceus vignette is visible, with manuscript signatures of bank officers at the bottom. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BANCO LA PROVIDENCIA EMISION PAGADERA POR EL GOBIERNO 1877 20 |
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| Comments |
Banco La Providencia was a Peruvian private bank operating under the relatively liberal banking legislation of the early 1870s, which briefly opened the field to commercial note issuers before the War of the Pacific and subsequent fiscal collapse dismantled most of them. This note dates to a narrow window of Peruvian banking history that closed violently within a few years of issue.
The American Bank Note Company contract work for South American private banks in this period was extensive — Peru alone had several competing issuers placing orders in New York simultaneously. ABNC's intaglio printing gives these notes a quality that frequently outlasted the institutions that commissioned them.