J.B. van Berckelaer

1871–1877

Break with Carrier-Belleuse; a studio with van Rasbourg

Carrier-Belleuse cast the statuettes Rodin made after hours under his own name; when Rodin signed one himself and offered it to a dealer behind his employer's back, he was dismissed. He then worked with Antoine-Joseph van Rasbourg: they rented a studio in Ixelles, and sales in Belgium went out under van Rasbourg's name.

1875–1876

Italy: Michelangelo, Donatello and Reims

Having saved some money, Rodin travelled to Italy — Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples and Venice — to study the Renaissance, above all Michelangelo and Donatello. On the way, at Reims, he first saw a Gothic cathedral, and the shock stayed with him for life.

1877

Back in Paris after six years in Belgium

Rodin and Rose settled in a small flat on the Left Bank; his mother was dead and his father blind and senile. Rodin's father and his eleven-year-old son Auguste, whom he had essentially abandoned for six years, moved in with the couple, and Rose looked after them.

1877–1878

Accused of casting “The Age of Bronze” from life

The figure looked so lifelike that Rodin was accused of casting it from a live model. He wrote to the newspapers, produced photographs of the model and demanded an inquiry, and a committee of sculptors cleared him; later many of his works were deliberately made larger or smaller than life.