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Lot Essay
In late 1875, Auguste Rodin traveled from Brussels, where he had been living since 1871, to tour Italy. He visited Turin, Genoa, Rome and Naples, but the highlight of his trip was the week he spent in Florence, studying the sculpture of Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel. With these lessons in mind he returned to Brussels and resumed work on his plaster model for L'âge d'airain, which he had begun the previous June. He based the figure's features on those of Auguste Neydt, a young Belgian soldier, who worked with Rodin for eighteen months, until the sculpture was finished in December 1876.
Rodin sent the plaster to be shown at the Cercle Artistique in Brussels in January 1877 and at the Paris Salon in May. It was at first titled L'homme vaincu ou Le soldat blessé, commemorating the tragic heroism of France's soldiers during their defeat in the war with Prussia in 1870-1871. The figure was initially intended to hold a lance in his left hand. Because the effect of the figure was so naturalistic and life-like, critics raised the possibility that the sculpture had been cast directly from the living model. The accusation was such an affront to Rodin's integrity, and so jeopardized his future reputation at the Salon, that he was compelled to request that a state committee of inquiry investigate the charges when he exhibited the plaster again in the 1880 Salon. The officials ruled in his favor, and the plaster was duly purchased by the state at the conclusion of the Salon and a bronze cast placed in the Jardin du Luxembourg in 1884.
Scholars consider L'âge d'airain to be Rodin's breakout sculpture and first important work in bronze. The success of its form and associated scandal at the Cercle Artistique in Brussels brought him fame and led to his commission of La Porte de l’Enfer in 1880.
Rodin sent the plaster to be shown at the Cercle Artistique in Brussels in January 1877 and at the Paris Salon in May. It was at first titled L'homme vaincu ou Le soldat blessé, commemorating the tragic heroism of France's soldiers during their defeat in the war with Prussia in 1870-1871. The figure was initially intended to hold a lance in his left hand. Because the effect of the figure was so naturalistic and life-like, critics raised the possibility that the sculpture had been cast directly from the living model. The accusation was such an affront to Rodin's integrity, and so jeopardized his future reputation at the Salon, that he was compelled to request that a state committee of inquiry investigate the charges when he exhibited the plaster again in the 1880 Salon. The officials ruled in his favor, and the plaster was duly purchased by the state at the conclusion of the Salon and a bronze cast placed in the Jardin du Luxembourg in 1884.
Scholars consider L'âge d'airain to be Rodin's breakout sculpture and first important work in bronze. The success of its form and associated scandal at the Cercle Artistique in Brussels brought him fame and led to his commission of La Porte de l’Enfer in 1880.