Footnotes

This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin catalogue critique de l'œuvre sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame & Lorenceau under the direction of Monsieur Jérôme Le Blay.

Provenance
Private collection, Europe.
Thence by descent to the present owner.

Literature
R.M. Rilke, Auguste Rodin, London, 1917 (another cast illustrated pl. 6).
G. Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, nos. 91-92 (plaster version illustrated no. 47).
G. Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1944, no. 71 (marble version illustrated).
G. Grappe, Le Musée Rodin, Paris, 1947 (marble version illustrated).
C. Goldscheider, Rodin, sa vie, son œuvre, son héritage, Paris, 1962 (marble version illustrated p. 49).
B. Champigneulle, Rodin, London, 1967, nos. 78-79 (marble version illustrated pp. 162-163).
R. Descharnes & J-F. Chabrun, Auguste Rodin, Lausanne, 1967 (marble version illustrated p. 131).
I. Jianou & C. Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967 (marble version illustrated pls. 54-55).
L. Goldscheider, Rodin Sculptures, London, 1970, no. 49 (marble version illustrated p. 121).
J.L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976 (marble version illustrated p. 77).
J. de Caso & P.B. Sanders, Rodin Sculpture, exh. cat., San Francisco, 1977 (another cast illustrated pp. 148 & 150).
A.E. Elsen, In Rodin's Studio, A Photographic Record of Sculpture in the Making, Ithaca, 1980 (marble version illustrated on the cover).
H. Pinet, Rodin, sculpteur et les photographes de son temps, Paris, 1985, no. 34 (marble version illustrated p. 46).
N. Barbier, Marbres de Rodin, Collection du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1987, no. 79 (marble version illustrated p. 185).
F.V. Grunfeld, Rodin, A Biography, New York, 1987 (another cast referenced pp. 187-190, 221-222, 260, 262, 275-276, 281-282, 342, 373-374, 400, 457 & 577).
P. Kjellberg, Les bronzes du XIXe siècle, Paris, 1987 (another cast illustrated p. 585).
D. Finn & M. Busco, Rodin and his Contemporaries, The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collection, New York, 1991 (another cast illustrated pp. 60-61).
A.E. Elsen, Rodin's Art, The Rodin Collection of Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University, New York, 2003, no. 49 (another cast illustrated pp. 214-215).
A. Le Normand-Romain, The Bronzes of Rodin, Catalogue of Works in the Musée Rodin, Vol. I, Paris, 2007, no. S.776 (another cast illustrated p. 161).


'The sculptor must learn to reproduce the surface, which means all that vibrates on the surface: spirit, soul, love, passion – life.'
- Auguste Rodin, quoted in V. Frisch & J.T. Shipley, Auguste Rodin, New York, 1939, p. 203.

Auguste Rodin's seminal composition, Le baiser, encapsulates the dramatic tension and psychological intensity that have led countless critics to label him the father of Modern sculpture. One of the most iconic images of Western art, Le baiser depicts two figures intertwined in a raw expression of desire. Inspired by Dante Alighieri's La Divina Commedia, the work depicts the tragic story of Francesca da Rimini, a historical contemporary of Dante who was since mythologised by her appearance in Canto V of Dante's Inferno. Unhappy in her political marriage to the son of the Lord of Rimini, Francesca commenced an affair with Giovanni's famously handsome younger brother, Paolo. In Dante's poetic recounting of the tale, the pair suddenly realise their passion for one another while reading the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere, at the precise moment in which the chivalric Knight gives into temptation and kisses the married Queen. Giovanni discovers the pair just as they are enraptured in their first tryst. Unable to stand the pain of their betrayal, he brutally murders them and condemns them to the Gates of Hell.

Popular among the cultured elite of Rodin's time, this tale of courtly love inspired numerous poetic and artistic interpretations, including from Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In his own take, Rodin captures the exhilarating moment when Francesca throws her arms around Paolo's neck and pulls him into the kiss. This dominant, lustful personification of Francesca subverts Dante's version, in which Paolo was the instigator. Her sexual agency was considered ground-breaking for its time. Paolo appears to be caught off guard, his right hand barely touching Francesca's thigh, his thumb erect. This delicate eroticism is accentuated by Rodin's energetic modelling, as the viewer is seduced by the figures' smooth, curling limbs, contrasted with the rough, weathered rock. The tactile juxtapositions embody the moment's narrative tensions – the spontaneous impulse of lust, the dubious perils of infidelity, the brutality of murder.

Le baiser was originally conceived for Rodin's monumental project, La porte de l'enfer (The Gates of Hell), a set of six-metre-high doors commissioned for a planned Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. While the Museum never eventuated, Rodin worked on the project sporadically for 37 years, utilising it as an enduring creative zone. The portal was divided into bas-relief vignettes from Dante's eight circles of Hell – including the Circle of Lust, within which Francesca and Paolo were buffeted by an eternal windstorm. Rodin ultimately chose to exclude the tender composition, feeling that it lacked the tragedy of the surrounding scenes and would better sing in the round as a spiralling tour-de-force.

Rodin relished in granting his compositions fresh meanings and analogies. Like a Socratic teacher, he would subvert the interrogations of the critics who visited his atelier, asking them what the titles should be. When one offered a title that Rodin liked, the sculpture would be officially renamed until somebody could come up with something better. Indeed, after the life-sized plaster version of the present work was debuted at the 1887 Brussels Salon with the name Francoise da Rimini, Rodin was persuaded by an attendee that a more universal title would be apt. By the time Rodin exhibited the marble version at the 1898 Paris Salon, it was simply known as 'The Kiss'. The sculpture's popularity led to the Barbedienne Foundry casting bronze editions in four different sizes.

With the generous government funds from the commission of the marble version, Rodin was able to hire live models, who he posed in dynamic stances hitherto unexplored by his contemporaries. Distancing himself from Academy-favoured frontal views, Rodin directly observed the rhythm and flow of the human body, illuminating every profile, dip and curve. This focus was first engendered in his years as an apprentice when he became enraptured with the drama and purity of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures, such as the Slaves series. For Rodin, the twisting, anguished slaves emerging miraculously from within rough-hewn stone possessed unparalleled emotion and intensity. The very notion of 'completing' a work became a fallacy to Rodin, leading to his characteristic unfinished style. Like Michelangelo's Slaves, the figures of Le baiser are quite literally conjoined with each other as well as their terrain. Seeking to reveal the process of his modelling, Rodin leaves a mere outline of Paolo's left hand upon the rocky base, allowing the bronze of their spiralling forms to meld in harmonious undulations.

Rodin's catalysing position within the timeline of art history is situated between Michelangelo on one side, and his own student, Constantin Brâncuşi, on the other. While Rodin was production-driven – re-working and re-contextualising his models to explore various states of expression – Brâncuşi was concept-driven, rendering non-literal representations of overarching concepts. Brâncuşi's version of The Kiss (1907-8) was made in retaliation to Rodin's, as the student forewent the master's observations of nature and carved abstract figures directly into the limestone base. While Rodin sought to heighten the emotional intensity of a narrative moment, Brâncuşi sought to invoke the basic concept of love. Sealed in an infinite kiss and merged into a rigid symmetrical entity, Brâncuşi's couple are immortalised by their own abstraction.

The creative dialogue of these masters of Modern sculpture engendered two contrasting perspectives, each of which holds significant merit in the timeline of art history. Brâncuşi's experiments evidence the resounding influence of the present work upon Modern and Contemporary creators. Rodin's unparalleled innovations and enduring cultural significance led Antoine Bourdelle to declare: 'There has never been, there will never be, a maître able to impose upon clay, upon bronze, upon marble the forms of tangible things with more profundity and intensity than Rodin' (Bourdelle, quoted in A. E. Elsen, (ed.), Rodin Rediscovered, Washington, 1981, p. 87).