The tapestry was always meant to hang in the Sydney Opera House but only now – 57 years after architect Joern Utzon commissioned the work – will this part of his vision be realised.
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The Opera House has paid more than $400,000 at auction to acquire the 6.5-square-metre wool tapestry, Les Dés Sont Jetés (The Dice Are Cast).
In 1958, a year after the Danish architect won the international competition for his Opera House design, Utzon requested the tapestry from the renowned Swiss-French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier.
But in 1966, a year after Le Corbusier's death, Utzon quit the Opera House project in disgust at the penny-pinching state government. The tapestry, like so much of Utzon's dream, never made it into the building, opened in 1973.
It hung instead on Utzon's own wall and, in 1960, he wrote to tell Le Corbusier: "It has endowed our home with a beauty so exquisite that I am at a loss for the proper words to describe our feelings about it."
But on Tuesday this week, almost seven years after Utzon's death, his art collection and personal effects were auctioned in Copenhagen.
Pre-auction publicity suggested the tapestry, the most prized item, would sell for up to $US120,000 ($148,000). But the hammer price was 280,000 euros (almost $413,000 on the day).
Money donated by philanthropists made the purchase possible, said the Opera House chief executive officer Louise Herron, who called it a vital piece of heritage.
In 1999, Utzon was re-engaged by the Opera House Trust and, with son Jan, completed plans and design principles for the evolving building. He made his own tapestry, Homage to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which now hangs in the Utzon Room.
Jan Utzon, in Denmark, said the Le Corbusier tapestry was finally coming "home".
"Le Corbusier incorporated the city and architectural details of the planned Opera House into his composition," he said. "It belongs in Sydney and we're thrilled at that this legacy will live on in the Opera House."
University of Queensland architecture professor Antony Moulis has noted that Les Dés Sont Jetés appears to include a tracing over the building site at Bennelong Point and the footprint of the tram depot previously housed on the headland.
The plan is to hang the tapestry in the main box office foyer of the Opera House.
