Occussi-Ambeno issued this attractive set of two stamps in 2009 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the invention of the piano by Bartolemeo Cristofori. Here is the full set.

The design shows the only known painting of Cristofori and a grand piano.

Mint unhinged, and in pristine condition.

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Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (1655 – 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.

The first unambiguous evidence for the piano comes from the 1700 inventory of the Medici. The entry in this inventory for Cristofori's piano begins as follows:

An "Arpicembalo" by Bartolomeo Cristofori, of new invention that produces soft and loud, with two sets of strings at unison pitch, with soundboard of cypress without rose..."

The term "Arpicembalo", literally "harp-harpsichord", was not generally familiar in Cristofori's day. Edward Good infers that this is what Cristofori himself wanted his instrument to be called. Our own word for the pianoforte, however, is the result of a gradual truncation over time of the words for "soft" and "hard" in Italian.

The Medici inventory goes on to describe the instrument in considerable detail. The range of this (now lost) instrument was a mere four octaves, C to c??'.

Another document referring to the earliest piano is a marginal note made by one of the Medici court musicians, Federigo Meccoli, in a copy of the book Le Istitutioni harmoniche by Gioseffo Zarlino. Meccoli wrote:

These are the ways in which it is possible to play the Arpicimbalo del piano e forte, invented by Master Bartolomeo Christofani [sic] of Padua in the year 1700, harpsichord maker to the Most Serene Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany.

According to Scipione Maffei's journal article, by 1711 Cristofori had built three pianos. One had been given by the Medici to Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome, and two had been sold in Florence.

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