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"Two young women with the symbols of manual labor (a shuttlecock and a washboard) place a wreath around the cameo of Alessandro Volta (1754-1827), to indicate their gratefulness for his electricity that liberates them from drudgery. The poster is for an exhibition of electrical products being held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Volta, the inventor of an instrument for measuring electricity (voltmeter), and the man who defined a single unit of it, a volt, as "the electron drive force which, when applied to the conductor with the resistance of one ohm, produces a current of one ampere." That so impressed Napoleon that he made him a count as well as a senator of Lombardy" (Rennert PAI-XXXVI, 353)

The poster advertises an exhibition celebrating the centennial of the invention of the electric battery by Volta

This is a selection from the very rare commemorative portfolio published by the  renowned Italian printer Ricordi in 1914. The portfolio consisted of 70 lithographic plates (smaller versions) of Ricordi's greatest posters printed between 1895 and 1914. Many of the images in the series are so rare that they can be found today in no other format. In the 1870s, Ricordi opened an in-house lithography shop to promote its operas and sheet music business. Ricordi quickly became the leading lithographer in Italy and by 1895 was creating posters for other clients such as Campari, the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, and the Mele Department store of Naples. Under the tutelage of Adolfo Hohenstein, a brilliant stable of artists emerged at Ricordi. Artists including Cappiello, Caldanzano, Cavaleri, Dudovich, Laskoff, Metlicovitz and Mataloni brought Art Nouveau, known as Stile Liberty in Italy, to a world class level. Much like the famous Maitre de L'Affiche series created by Cheret in Paris, this portfolio celebrated the rise of the poster - which in Italy was almost single-handedly accomplished by Ricordi. (www.internationalposter.com)