Study
By Rodin
Photograph reproduced by permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
He stopped short, the damp cloth in his hands. “Yes, exactly as it is!” he replied, frowning.
“You are obliged to alter—”
“Not a jot!”
“But, after all, the proof that you do change it is this, that the cast would give not at all the same impression as your work.”
He reflected an instant and said: “That is so! Because the cast is less true than my sculpture!
“It would be impossible for any model to keep an animated pose during all the time that it would take to make a cast from it. But I keep in my mind the ensemble of the pose and I insist that the model shall conform to my memory of it. More than that,—the cast only reproduces the exterior; I reproduce, besides that, the spirit which is certainly also a part of nature.
“I see all the truth, and not only that of the outside.
“I accentuate the lines which best express the spiritual state that I interpret.”
As he spoke he showed me on a pedestal near by one of his most beautiful statues, a young man kneeling, raising suppliant arms to heaven. All his being is drawn out with anguish. His body is thrown backwards. The breast heaves, the throat is tense with despair, and the hands are thrown out towards some mysterious being to which they long to cling.