Auguste RodinFrancia, 1840–1917Eternal Idol
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Harvard Art Museums
Cambridge, Stati Uniti
Sala2120, floor 2, European and American Art, 17th–19th century
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About the sculpture
Rodin modeled more than two hundred figures inspired by Dante’s Inferno for his massive sculptural project that came to be known as the Gates of Hell (1880–c. 1890). This celebrated figural group, derived from that work, was carved for the painter Eugène Carrière, who reluctantly lent it to the watershed 1900 Rodin retrospective exhibition. There it was so enthusiastically received that Rodin produced a second marble of the figures. The title is puzzling. Women were often described as “idols” in nineteenth-century poetry; the woman here may be only an ideal, in spite of her cool, fleshly presence. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “a mysterious greatness emanates from this group. . . . One doesn’t dare assign a meaning to it. . . . A heaven is near, but is not yet attained; a hell is near, and not yet forgotten.”
Harvard Art Museums
Scheda
- Numero di inventario
- 1943.1034
In catalogo
Fonti
- Harvard Art Museums: the museum's own open data · acquisita 7 giorni fa
- Immagine: Harvard Art Museums — © President and Fellows of Harvard College
Nel frattempo, nella vita di Auguste Rodin
Tutta la vita1890s–1900s
Young sculptors in Rodin's studio
His income let him hire gifted young sculptors, among them Antoine Bourdelle, Charles Despiau, Jules Desbois, François Pompon and Aristide Maillol. Constantin Brancusi left after two months, convinced that nothing grows under a big tree.
1891
Commission for the Balzac monument
The Société des Gens de Lettres, largely through the personal efforts of its president, Émile Zola, commissioned a monument to Balzac to be delivered in two years. Rodin pictured a massive standing figure with a large head and a body hidden in drapery, but he missed the deadline.
19 gennaio 1892 · Premio
Officer of the Legion of Honour
1893
Chicago: nudes behind a drape
Through the curator Sarah Hallowell, Rodin sent “Cupid and Psyche”, “Sphinx” and “Andromeda” to the Chicago World's Fair; the nudes caused such controversy that they were hidden behind a drape, with special permission needed to see them. Even so, the financier Charles Yerkes bought two large marbles and was probably the first American to own a Rodin.
1895
Buys the Villa des Brillants at Meudon
Rodin bought the Villa des Brillants estate near Paris and moved his studio there, but there was not enough room and two years later it went back to Paris. His income let him collect: Egyptian, Greek and Roman sculpture, Persian miniatures and paintings by his contemporaries, including Van Gogh's “Portrait of Père Tanguy”.
1895
“The Burghers of Calais” installed in Calais
Against Rodin's wishes — he had hoped to place the group at ground level near the town hall — Calais chose a high platform in front of a public garden, with a cast-iron railing. Rodin had proposed doing without a pedestal so that viewers could “penetrate to the heart of the subject”.
