Few works by the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, who moved to France permanently at the age of 28, are held in his home country. So the Romanian government jumped at the chance to acquire his limestone sculpture The Wisdom of the Earth (1907), which depicts a seated female nude.
The work was put up for sale for €11m by the heirs of Gheorghe Romascu, a friend of Brancusi, who bought it from the artist in 1911. (The sculpture was seized by the Communist government in 1957 and returned to Romascu’s heirs in 2012 after a long legal battle.) But the government will have to pay double the €5m it initially pledged towards the acquisition after a €6m public fundraising campaign it launched in May, with the catchphrase “Brancusi is mine”, raised just over €1m by its September deadline.
On 12 October, the government announced that it has passed an emergency ordinance to purchase the sculpture. A spokesman had said that, although a financial mechanism had yet to be determined, government funds would be made available to cover the fundraising gap and that the €11m would be on hand by the end of November deadline.
According to Corina Şuteu, Romania’s minister of culture, the statue will travel around the country but will first go on display at the National Museum of Art of Romania in Bucharest.
