The official site of Italy's central bank

1915-31

The first banknotes issued by the Bank of Italy and designed by Barbetti received some criticism. Besides some defects of an aesthetic nature, other, more serious, technical defects were noted, i.e. the combination of colours "did not pose any real difficulties for counterfeiters". As early as 1898, even before all the denominations had been issued, proposals for new designs were requested from Rome's Circolo Artistico Internazionale, but none of the designs was satisfactory.

In 1900 the Director General of the Bank, Bonaldo Stringher, made informal inquiries to find the names of at least three artists to create the new designs. In the end the choice fell on Giovanni Capranesi, a well-known artist of some repute, who was the President of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

Work on the new sketches was underway by 1910. On the front of the higher denomination notes were the two Nicola Cantalamessa-Papotti sculpture groups that decorated the façade of Palazzo Koch (later removed in the 1930s because of building stability concerns). The choice of the two groups of figures was dictated by a desire to give the new designs "a particularly Italian character of simplicity and purity, eliminating any concession to bizarre forms of art which might offend the balanced taste of the Italian people".

As regards the choice of subjects and the production of the new banknotes, a special commission was formed in 1910, chaired by Tito Canovai who became Deputy Director General in 1914, and Tommaso di Lorenzo, Andrea Bianchi and Ettore Filosini as members. The commission aimed to guarantee both aesthetic and technical criteria to ensure the success of the new banknotes.

Tommaso di Lorenzo, Director of the Regia Calcografia, and Andrea Bianchi were put in charge of the hand engraving of the clichés for the new banknotes, while the machine engraving and all the other work requiring special technical skills was done by Ettore Filosini, the Technical Director for the production of Bank of Italy notes. The paper mill was managed by Enrico Galliani who had previously been the director of large paper mills in the North of Italy.

The large number of counterfeit banknotes in circulation, the diffidence that was beginning to emerge in some of the provinces towards paper money, and the discovery in Milan in 1910 of the production of counterfeit 1,000-lira notes, led the Bank to examine the possibility of creating new notes that were more difficult to falsify and were more aesthetically pleasing.

The strong point of the innovation campaign was the search for new subjects, the improvement of the production systems for watermarked paper and the introduction of intaglio printing; counterfoils were discontinued. The new banknotes went into circulation in 1915.

In 1926, with the unification of the banknote issuing service, the Bank of Italy became the only bank authorized to print notes (Royal Decree 1926/812, ratified by Law 1926/1262).

In 1928 the State Printing Works was established with the task of meeting all the printing needs of the public administration, including printing State notes, postage stamps, revenue stamps, and revenue stamped paper.