Description
Tobler, the Swiss chocolate company, issued these poster stamps as no. 370 in their "Poets and Philosophers" series.
Both stamps use the "somewhat oldwomanly likeness" of Dante drawn by Stefano Tofanelli and engraved by Raffaello Morghen in the eighteenth century.1
The English stamp has the portrait in a frame with the masks of tragedy and comedy in the upper corners and a scroll and horn at the bottom. The stamp has text as follows: at top: "POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS / ITALIAN"; at bottom: "DANTE ALLIGHIERI 1265-1321 / TOBLER / SWISS MILK / CHOCOLATE / No 370 · SERIE 31 · No 361-372".
The other stamp is in Ido, a derivative of Esperanto, and has a simpler frame. The stamp has text as follows: at top: "POETI E PENSISTI / · ITALIA ·"; at bottom: "DANTE ALIGHIERI 1265-1321 / TOBLER / SUISIANA LAKTO / CHOKOLADO / LINGUO INTERNACIONA ‹IDO› / (REFORM-ESPERANTO) / SERIO XXXI No 361–372 No 370".
Bibliographic Citation
1. Frank Jewett Mather, Jr., The Portraits of Dante Compared with the Measurements of His Skull and Reclassified, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology 10 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921): 48–49, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001218985. Mather incorrectly ascribes the portrait to Antonio Zatta's 1757 Venice edition of Dante's works; Tofanelli was born in 1752 and Morghen in 1758.