"è cultura!" - La Lira: le banconote e l'arte

The last 1,000-lire note issued by the Bank of Italy, designed by Giovanni Pino, entered circulation in 1990. For the first time, the obverse features the effigy of a real woman, not an allegory; an illustrious figure of the 20th century: Maria Montessori. On the obverse, we find the image of a boy and a girl intent on studying and a story to tell. Luigi Einaudi, governor of the Bank of Italy from 1945 to 1948, greatly appreciated the Gualino collection, one of the most important private art collections of the entire 19th century, and in particular a painting by Armando Spadini called "Children at Study." This canvas was in his study at Palazzo Koch. When Einaudi became President of the Republic in 1948, he could not bear to part with it and asked that the painting follow him to its new destination at the Quirinale. The sweetness and simplicity of such a familiar image is perhaps what was needed to lift a country that needed to rebuild itself from the ashes of war. This is how an everyday scene becomes history: we find the depiction of the painting on the last thousand-lire banknote dedicated to Maria Montessori. From the smallest to the largest denomination, many stories are contained behind artistic and design masterpieces. The Lira: testimony to how art and economics are truly two sides of the same coin, or in this case, "money."