Camille Claudel “This wasn’t a discovery,” they said. “It was a meeting.”

The recent resurfacing of Camille Claudel’s long-lost sculpture in a Paris apartment is already the kind of story that captivates me—art, history, and a long-overdue recognition of genius. But what struck me most wasn’t just the €3 million auction price or the decades of obscurity. It was how the person who found it described the moment.  

“This wasn’t a discovery,” they said. “It was a meeting.”  

There’s something poetic in that. A sculpture isn’t just an object to be unearthed like buried treasure—it carries presence, weight, history. And Claudel’s work, more than most, holds emotion. "The Age of Maturity" isn’t just bronze; it’s heartbreak solidified. The piece, which shows a man being pulled away by an older woman while a younger one reaches for him, is often seen as Claudel’s painful farewell to Auguste Rodin. It’s a moment of loss and inevitability, captured forever.  

That it disappeared for so long mirrors Claudel’s own fate. Cast aside by the art world, institutionalized for the last 30 years of her life, she never got to witness the appreciation her work now receives. Yet here we are, meeting her again through this sculpture—reconnecting with the raw, unfiltered emotion she left behind.  

For me, this moment is about more than art. It’s about time, recognition, and how history is often slow to catch up to the truth. Some voices, like Claudel’s, are silenced too soon. But art has a way of waiting—until we are finally ready to listen.