It’s following me.
Oct 18th, 2005 by Kate
Monument to the Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin (French, born Paris, 1840 - 1917)
During the Hundred Years War, six burghers or leading citizens, of the French city of Calais sacrificed their lives and relinquished the keys of the city to the English King in exchange for his lifting an eleven-month siege on their city. Read: these guys gave up their lives to save their city. Those are real heroes.
Auguste Rodin submitted a maquette for a competition in Calais, France to erect a monument in honor of these local heros. The city council signed a contract with Rodin in January 1885 to execute a monument, but two years before its completion, the commissioners of the monument disbanded. Rodin still completed the sculpture.
Taken from the Hirshorn website: “Rodin portrayed the burghers with necks encircled by ropes, their bodies covered only by rough robes, as they walk barefoot to deliver the keys of the town. Unlike traditional monuments, which showed heroes striding forward proudly, Rodin depicted the mens’ profound anguish at leaving their homes and families. He distorted the figures to express emotional trauma: the enlarged hands and feet emphasize their melancholy gestures and faltering steps, the tautened muscles convey a sense of physical stress, and the deeply sunken eyes and furrowed brows express heart-rending torment.” (link)
“It is the subject itself which (…) imposes a heroic vision of all six figures being sacrificed to one single communicative expression and feeling. The pedestal is triumphal, it has the rudiments of an arch of triumph intended to uphold, not a quadriga, but human patriotism, self-abnegation and virtue” (Rodin).
I’ve seen many of his other works, including one of his most popular works, The Kiss, located in the Tate Modern Museum in London. The Burghers of Calais still remains my favorite.
Maybe it is because we have a special relationship: my junior year of High School I took AP Art History on a whim, I needed another AP class to help boost my GPA. (And look where it got me…) I literally slept through that class; head down on the desk, drool and all. It isn’t hard to fall asleep in a dark room. What makes this particular sculpture so important to me is the story behind the bronze and the fact that I had to write an essay about it on the actual AP test. And on all of my major trips since that test, with the exception of Hawaii, I have run across a casting of the statue: at the Met in New York, outside the Houses of Parliament in London and in the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden along the mall in Washington DC. We were meant to be together, I can just tell.
Mom loves to tell the story of the first time I saw it. We were on our way out of the Met headed back to our hotel when I saw the back of this statue that looked very familiar. I walked quickly toward it and around to the front and started freaking out. Of course, I was in a very crowded museum so I was freaking out very quietly. I freaked out again in London last summer, I just happened to be walking toward the Houses of Parliament during a break between my classes and there it was up on a pedestal in all its glory. When I saw it in DC, I was with my mother again and I had suggested that we go through the Sculpture Garden sort of randomly. We were right by it, and we were already soaked from the rain so why not. Totally didn’t expect to see it there. Now every time I run the mall, I get to run by the statue on my way home.
I’m pretty sure I have yet to see the original; I was a few feet away from the Musée Rodin in Paris last summer, I’m such an idiot for not going in. Another excuse for me to go back to France I guess. And this time I’ll be able to spend a lot more time in the museums.