68: The Rodin Room

The Bronze Age

1870s

Rodin, Auguste

Executed in 1876-1877, this work was originally called The Wounded Warrior. It shows a naked youth holding a spear, depicted with unsual realism, without idealisation and generalisation. Rodin was throwing out a challenge to academic art and critics even accused him of taking a cast from the model, the result was so lifelike. Only the intervention of a group of artists put an end to the accusations. For all the detailed moulding, which reveals a careful the study of nature, everything is subjugated to the overall conception, motion as an expression of emotion. The title, The Bronze Age, reflects the legend of different periods in the history of mankind, under which a happy era was described as a golden age, an unhappy era as bronze. The movement which runs throughout the young man's body suggests the bursting forth of the strength of youth, of mankind.