Ootje Oxenaar's commission for this note marked a deliberate break from the conservative engraved portraiture that had defined Dutch banknote design for generations. His approach was graphic and modernist — and the choice of Baruch de Spinoza as the face of the highest-denomination note was itself a pointed act of cultural rehabilitation. Spinoza had been excommunicated from Amsterdam's Jewish community in 1656 under a herem of unusual severity, and for centuries remained a controversial figure in Dutch public life.
By 1972, placing him on the 1000 Gulden was an unambiguous statement. The note circulated until the guilder's replacement by the euro in 2002.
Ootje Oxenaar's commission for this note marked a deliberate break from the conservative engraved portraiture that had defined Dutch banknote design for generations. His approach was graphic and modernist — and the choice of Baruch de Spinoza as the face of the highest-denomination note was itself a pointed act of cultural rehabilitation. Spinoza had been excommunicated from Amsterdam's Jewish community in 1656 under a herem of unusual severity, and for centuries remained a controversial figure in Dutch public life.
By 1972, placing him on the 1000 Gulden was an unambiguous statement. The note circulated until the guilder's replacement by the euro in 2002.