1000 Lire

The 1938–39 1000 Lire was the highest denomination in circulation as Italy entered the war economy. Mussolini's government had been quietly inflating the money supply since Ethiopia in 1935, and by the time this note was being issued, the lira had lost significant purchasing power — making a thousand-lire note far less impressive in real terms than it appeared on paper.

Capranesi designed the plate in-house at the Officina della Banca d'Italia, one of the few central bank printing works in Europe that maintained full design and production capability internally throughout the 1930s.