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500 Lei
| Issuer | Banca Națională a României |
|---|---|
| Year | 1925-1938 |
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| Reference(s) | P#32 |
| Obverse description | Two allegorical female figures in Romanian folk costume frame the central guilloche medallion: at left, a seated woman holds a distaff, while at right, a seated woman cradles an infant at her breast. The large intaglio vignette is rendered in a classical academic style after Serveau's painting, with the denomination "500" appearing in each upper corner and the bold letterpress legend "CINCI SUTE LEI" across the upper centre. Signature lines for the Governor, Director, and Chief Cashier appear in the lower centre field. |
|---|---|
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| Variants | P#32a(1) - 01.10.1925, 04.11.1926 & 15.12.1927 signature titles: Guvernator, Director & Casier P#32a(2) - 13.05.1930, 16.10.1930, 16.02.1931, 31.03.1931, 22.10.1931, 03.12.1931, 13.05.1932, 27.10.1932, 21.04.1933, 21.09.1933, 14.12.1933, 15.03.1934 & 27.01.1938 signature titles: Guvernator & Casier Central |
| Comments |
Clément Serveau was a prolific French designer who worked extensively for the Imprimerie de la Banque de France, and this note bears his characteristic compositional style — though it was produced for Romania rather than France, a common arrangement in the interwar period when Romanian banknote production relied heavily on French printing infrastructure. Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her engraving work as "Rita," was one of the few women engravers active in European intaglio banknote work during this era.
The series ran across thirteen years, an unusually long lifespan that reflects the relative monetary stability Romania managed through much of the interwar period before the pressures of the late 1930s.