500 Lei

Romania's postwar inflation crisis of the early 1920s pushed the National Bank toward Paris for printing capacity it could not supply domestically. This 500 Lei was produced at the Banque de France's own print works — an arrangement that carried real institutional prestige, since the BdF did not take commercial printing contracts lightly.

Clément Serveau was a noted French illustrator and poster artist, an unusual choice for banknote design work. The obverse intaglio was engraved by Marguerite Dreyfus, known professionally as Rita — one of the very few women working at that level in European security printing at the time.