Front: Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Romanian sculptor

He was one of the founding figures of modern sculpture and one of the most original artists of the twentieth-century. His groundbreaking carvings introduced abstraction and primitivism into sculpture for the first time, and were as important as Picasso's paintings to the development of modern art.

Back: Brancusi seated with statue

Front: Grigore Antipa (1867-1944), Romanian biologist

He studied the fauna of the Danube Delta and the Black Sea. Between 1892 and 1944 he was the director of the Bucharest Natural History Museum, which now bears his name.

Back: Herons, fish, and net on outline of Danube

Front: Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Romanian sculptor

Back: Sculptures

Front: Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), Romanian poet

Eminescu was only 20 when Titu Maiorescu, the top literary critic in 1870 Romania dubbed him "a real poet", in an essay where only a handful of the Romanian poets of the time were spared Maiorescu's harsh criticism.

In the following decade, Eminescu's fame as a poet grew continually thanks to (1) the way he managed to enrich the literary language with words and phrases from all Romanian regions, from old texts, and with new words that he coined from his wide philosophical readings; (2) the use of bold metaphors, much too rare in earlier Romanian poetry; (3) last but not least, he was arguably the first Romanian writer who published in all Romanian provinces and was constantly interested in the problems of Romanians everywhere.

Back: Putna monastery