Alessandro Volta. Engraved portrait By Rados after Focosi

Volta, Alessandro (1745-1827). Engraved portrait by Luigi Rados (1773-1840) after Roberto Focosi. Milan: presso l'Editore Proprietario Luigi Rados, 1828. 490 x 347 mm. Small repairs to margins, some faint stains, otherwise very good.

This fine portrait, engraved after Volta's death, shows him seated at a table, his left hand inside his coat and his right resting on the table, with an example of his "crown of cups" battery at his right and a Voltaic pile behind him. A 7-line caption in Italian gives a brief resume of Volta's achievements. Volta, the inventor of the first electric battery, published his first paper on it in the Phil. Trans. in 1800; his investigations proved the identity of Galvani's "animal" electricity with the electricity generated by his apparatus. The Voltaic pile made possible the experiments leading to the decomposition of water, electro-deposition of metal, and creation of the electro-magnet, initiating the electrical age. Benezit for the engraver.