500 Francs

The Banque de l'Algérie's wartime 500 Francs series emerged from an unusual administrative moment: Algeria was under Vichy control until November 1942, when Allied landings made it suddenly the provisional seat of French governmental authority. Notes issued across 1943–44 circulated in a territory that was simultaneously a French colony, an active military theater, and the de facto base of the Free French administration under Giraud and later de Gaulle.

Romagnoli's engraving work on this series is among the finer intaglio printing produced for French colonial currency of the period. Duval's design commission predated the occupation entirely, which created the awkward situation of Vichy-era institutional continuity in the artwork.