Saint John the Baptist (Rodin)

Saint John the Baptist (preaching) is a bronze sculpture, by Auguste Rodin.

Saint John the Baptist

After the controversy of his Age of Bronze, Rodin began modeling the larger than life figure in 1877. He showed a plaster model at the Salon of 1880.[1]

Rodin described to Dujardin-Beaumetz 1913 how he was inspired to create this sculpture by an Italian peasant named Pignatelli.

As soon as I saw him, I was filled with admiration; this rough, hairy man expressed violence in his bearing… yet also the mystical character of his race. I immediately thought of a Saint John the Baptist, in other words, a man of nature, a visionary, a believer, a precursor who came to announce one greater than himself. The peasant undressed, planted himself firmly on his feet, head up, torso straight, at the same time putting his weight on both legs, open like a compass. The movement was so right, so straightforward and so true that I cried: ‘But it’s a man walking!’ I immediately resolved to model what I had seen.

Reduced size examples were cast between 1878 and 1907. The Walking Man is a version of the figure without the head.[2]

Examples are in the collections of: Musée d'Orsay, Musée du Luxembourg, Musée Rodin, the Tate Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[3] the Norton Simon Museum,[4] California Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Glenkiln Sculpture Park, and the Saint Louis Art Museum[5].

References
  1. "Saint John the Baptist, 1878, reduction #2, 1898". Archived from the original on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2011-07-01.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  2. "Rodin works". rodin-web.org. 1992. Retrieved 2017-12-06.
  3. "Auguste Rodin. St. John the Baptist Preaching. 1878-80 (cast 1921)". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2017-12-06.
  4. "Saint John the Baptist, 1878-80". Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2011-07-01.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  5. "St. John the Baptist". Saint Louis Art Museum: Collections. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  • Dujardin-Beaumetz, François (1913). Entretiens avec Rodin [Interviews with Rodin] (in French). Editions du musée Rodin.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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