50 000 Lire Volto di donna

Banca d'Italia's in-house printing works — the Officina Carte Valori — produced this note entirely domestically at a time when many central banks still relied on foreign security printers. The design came from Guglielmo Savini and the intaglio engraving from Alberto Canfarini, both staff artists whose careers were spent almost entirely within the Officina's walls. That institutional insularity shows in the work: technically accomplished, rigidly formal.

The denomination reflects Italy's severe inflationary pressure through the late 1970s, when lira purchasing power collapsed rapidly enough that 50,000-lire notes entered everyday commercial use rather than remaining instruments of large-value settlement. Pick 107 circulated across a five-year production window before the series was phased out ahead of the 100,000-lire issues.