Auguste Rodin

Barbara Guggenheim, Los Angeles
Acquired from the above in 1987

Georges Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, no. 148, illustration of the marble version p. 59
Albert E. Elsen, Rodin, New York, 1963, illustration of a larger cast p. 63
Robert Descharnes and Jean-François Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Paris, 1967, illustration of the marble version p. 131
John L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, illustration of the marble version p. 77

Very good condition. Slightly dirty, particularly in crevices, and could benefit from a cleaning. A few scattered spots of discoloration and a few tiny dots of minor green corrosion.
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Le Baiser is one of Rodin's best-known and most highly regarded sculptures.  Originally intended for the left side of his monumental project, The Gates of Hell, the present work portrays a scene from Dante's Inferno.  Here, Rodin depicts the ill-fated lovers, Paolo and Francesca, who were murdered by Francesca's husband and Paolo's brother, Vanni Malatesta. Banished to hell for their adulterous passion, the two lovers were doomed to spend eternity in an embrace. Among all the love stories in Dante's La Commedia, this forbidden liaison, so reminiscent of courtly love, had the greatest resonance for a late 19th-century audience. Unlike more austere, contemporary variations of this subject, Le Baiser depicts the lovers in the throws of a passionate kiss.  The sensuality of this work, enhanced by the tenderness of the figures' kiss, has made Le Baiser one of the most celebrated images in 19th century Western art.

During the early 1880s when the present work was completed, Rodin was still trying to prove his talent to the Parisian art world.  With Le Baiser, the artist successfully demonstrated his mastery of the sculptural medium and his sensitivity to the human condition.  As explained by Albert E. Elsen, "In The Kiss, which could have been made by 1881, Rodin was still trying to show the official art world that he could compose with the best of the Prix de Rome winners. In fact, he not only outdid them in the sincerity of the lovers'expressions of mutual awareness and love, he even revived an old gesture of sexual appropriation by having the more assertive Francesca sling her leg over that of the hesitant Paolo" (Albert E. Elsen, The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, Stanford, 1985, p. 78).