How do we move away from being a civilization that produces art that causes comments like, “my five year old could make this,” back to being one that creates beauty and inspires deep questions? We must reject modernity and embrace tradition. To embrace tradition, we must first learn about it..
Let’s study art history together.
The Burghers of Calais (Calais, France)
Artist
Auguste Rodin
Year
1884–89
Type
Bronze
Dimensions
201.6 cm × 205.4 cm × 195.9 cm (79+3⁄8 in × 80+7⁄8 in × 77+1⁄8 in)
Location
Calais, France
This is one of the most famous sculptures in the world. One of the more unique aspects of the piece is that it was made to remember a surrender during the 100 Years’ War, rather than a victory. [Insert your jokes here, but only if your civilization produced a better general than Napoleon Bonaparte. I’ll wait.] Anyway, the British also did something unexpected when the city was surrendered – they showed mercy.
In the 19th century, Calais commissioned Rodin to build a monument about the Calais surrender. He captures the beautiful nobility of the beleaguered and starving men who met with the English to surrender the city and the castle.
The Burghers of Calais (French: Les Bourgeois de Calais) is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in 12 original castings and numerous copies. It commemorates an event during the Hundred Years’ War, when Calais, a French port on the English Channel, surrendered to the English after an 11-month siege. The city commissioned Rodin to create the sculpture in 1884 and the work was completed in 1889.
History
In 1346, England’s Edward III, after victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender.
The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart (c. 1337 – c. 1405) tells a story of what happened next: Edward offered to spare the people of the city if six of its leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded they walk out wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers joined with him. Saint Pierre led this envoy of volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death which Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.
According to Froissart’s story, the burghers expected to be executed, but their lives were spared by the intervention of England’s queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband to exercise mercy by claiming their deaths would be a bad omen for her unborn child.
Composition
The City of Calais had attempted to erect a statue of Eustache de Saint Pierre, eldest of the burghers, since 1845. Two prior artists were prevented from creating the sculpture: David d’Angers by his death, and Auguste Clésinger by the Franco-Prussian War. In 1884 the municipal corporation of the city invited several artists, Rodin amongst them, to submit proposals for the project.
Rodin’s design, which included all six figures rather than just de Saint Pierre, was controversial. The public felt that it lacked “overtly heroic antique references” which were considered integral to public sculpture. It was not a pyramidal arrangement and contained no allegorical figures. It was intended to be placed at ground level, rather than on a pedestal. The burghers were not presented in a positive image of glory; instead, they display “pain, anguish and fatalism”. To Rodin, this was nevertheless heroic, the heroism of self-sacrifice.
In 1895 the monument was installed in Calais on a large pedestal in front of Parc Richelieu, a public park, contrary to the sculptor’s wishes, who wanted contemporary townsfolk to “almost bump into” the figures and feel solidarity with them. Only later was his vision realised, when the sculpture was moved in front of the newly completed town hall of Calais, where it now rests on a much lower base.
sculptures of all individual figures (casts from 1984 till 1988) and the First Maquette of the Burghers of Calais, cast 1987, in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, Shizuoka City, Japan; The Burghers of Calais, Rodin Wing, Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art
a bust of Jean d’Aire, recovered a quarter mile away from Ground Zero, together with other pieces from works by Rodin which were in the corporate offices of Cantor Fitzgerald at the original One World Trade Center.
Rodin is one of the most famous sculptors in history and this is one of his most well-known works.
For a great short review of the sculpture, I recommend the following.
