The Age of Bronze, 1876

Auguste Rodin revered ancient and medieval art and the work of Renaissance sculptors, particularly that of Michelangelo. Even as he looked to the past, Rodin wrought a seismic change in European sculptural practice; many scholars have argued that he is the most influential sculptor of modern times.

A life-sized version of The Age of Bronze was the sculptor’s first full-length work to be exhibited at Paris’s annual art show, the Salon, in 1877. The figure’s ambiguous pose perplexed contemporaries accustomed to traditional French sculpture based on historical subjects and with poses that were easy to interpret. Critics condemned the work because they could not readily identify the lithe young man with closed eyes or understand what motivated the stance, particularly the gesture of the raised arms. More importantly, they could not believe that the sculptor’s skill alone had created flesh, bone, and tensed muscle of such heightened realism, and accused Rodin of having cast the figure directly from life — an accusation that the sculptor vehemently repudiated. The model was a young soldier, not a professional, since the artist sought naturalness rather than an exaggerated pose. He wanted to create a figure that was more beautiful and expressive than a conventional representation of a mythological or allegorical subject. Instead, the freestanding figure, which was also known as The Awakening Man or The Vanquished One, recalled an early era in the history of humankind.

Rodin ultimately won over officials. The French Ministry of Fine Arts purchased a cast of The Age of Bronze, and in 1880 awarded him an important state commission for a monumental bronze portal for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The Age of Bronze became one of Rodin’s most famous works, and also proved to be a commercial success, since it was already cast in various sizes at the beginning of the twentieth century. The present medium-sized example may have been one of the first produced during Rodin’s lifetime, and was surely cast during the lifetime of his preferred bronze founder, Eugène Rudier (died 1952), of the Alexis Rudier Foundry, whose mark appears on the base.