Sculpture “The Cathedral” (Étude pour le secret) by Auguste Rodin, bronze version

François-Auguste-René Rodin is considered a brilliant innovator of sculpture and, alongside Praxiteles, Michelangelo, Cellini, and Canova, ranks among the greatest sculptors of all time. His sculptural output is so extensive that a complete catalogue of his works has yet to be published. It would certainly comprise several hundred pages. Rodin studied at the School of Applied Arts, having been rejected three times by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Rodin was a fervent admirer of beauty. He was most captivated by the human body, which he repeatedly immortalized in its "vérité fugitive," in the fleeting moment: vibrant, pulsating beauty that took on an imperishable form under his creative hands. Whatever Rodin created with his hands radiates tremendous vitality and untamed power. His sculptures, with their multifaceted, fractured surfaces, ushered in a new era of sculpture. The genius of Rodin's modern formal language, which expressed itself with elements of Impressionism, abandoned the monumental pose of the academic style, and brought emotional states to life in dynamic surfaces, had yet to be recognized: "Boldness of light - modesty of shadow" - Rodin composed this dialogue of elevations and depressions into the "skin" of his sculptures. Flickering highlights and mysterious shadows animate his figures and bring them to life: "Sculpture is the art of representing forms in the play of light and shadow."