Safta the Flower Girl

On the evening of 22 December 1989, the fighting in Bucharest's Palace Square reached the former Royal Palace, which already housed the National Museum of Art. The shooting went on into the next day, the museum's painting-restoration workshop burned, and 30 pictures were destroyed. This young Romani flower-seller, painted by Luchian around 1900, was hanging in the Romanian gallery. She was hit by two bullets, one in the bare chest just below the neckline and one through the dark jacket over her heart. Sorina Gheorghiță, a curator and restorer at the museum, has said she cannot believe that shot was random. Who fired it was never established. The museum's own restorers began work on the damaged paintings in January 1990, and Safta was repaired in their workshop. In 2020 she became the poster for the museum's exhibition about those restorations, a close-up of her face with small photographs of the two bullet holes set beside it.