Action Heroes Donatello, Michelangelo, Cellini, Bernini, Canova….what next?

David Donatello 1430 bronze

David Michelangelo marble

David Bernini marble

Benvenuto Cellini Perseus

Antonio Canova Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Auguste Rodin The Age of Bronze 1875

Auguste Rodin You already know him….

Auguste Rodin

The Thinker 1880 Rodin has made the work of the mind palpable.

Donatello St. John the Baptist 1457

Lorenzo Ghiberti St. John the Baptist

Bernini John the Baptist

Michelangelo Dying Slave 1513 In 1875, Rodin went to Rome to study the classical models and the work of Michelangelo.

Auguste Rodin St. John the Baptist 1878

The Kiss

The Burghers of Calais 1895 “In 1347 King Edward III had besieged the French town of Calais for nearly a year, and by early August its starved population could not hold out any longer. Edward III then told the people of Calais that they would all be killed, unless six of its citizens presented themselves to the King, dressed only in their shirts, with a rope around their necks, and with the keys to the city in their hands. Rodin centered The Burghers of Calais around a modern version of heroism that can be termed ‘civic heroism', which draws on the collective and civic courage of the average person, rather than on the physical courage of the single and outstanding individual. Or, to put it differently, Rodin turned the statue into a democratic exemplum” ( Richard Swedberg in Theory, Culture and Society, 2005).

The Burghers of Calais 1895

Honoré de Balzac 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850 Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists. Auguste Rodin Monument to Balzac 1891–1898

“As form followed form, Rodin’s vision slowly grew. And at last he saw Balzac: a substantial figure, striding powerfully forwards, its heaviness counteracted by the fall of the coat. The hair weighed down the powerful neck, and from the mass of hair there gazed a face intoxicated with its own vision, a face that boiled with creative energy: the fact of an elemental force. This was Balzac in in all the fullness of his productive powers, the founder of generations, the waster of fates…This was how Rodin saw Balzac in the moment of intense concentration and tragic exaggeration, and this is how he created him. The image did not fade: it came into being.” --Rainer Maria Rilke

Auguste Rodin Monument to Balzac 1891–1898

Edward Steichen Midnight - Rodin's Balzac 1908

Camille Claudel “My very dearest down on both knees before your beautiful body which I embrace.” Letter from Rodin to Camille Claudel (end of beginning of 1885).

Camille Claudel The Implorer 1892

Camille Claudel La Valse (The Waltz) 1892

Camille Claudel La Vague