Rodin All About Eve

Published in 2006 to accompany a display of Rodin’s sculpture of Eve at Kettle's Yard Cambridge.

The work of the famed French sculptor, Auguste Rodin is admired for its realism, beauty and psychological intensity and Eve shows the sculptor at his most profound.Rodin’s Eve is not the temptress picking the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, but Eve after the Fall. Perhaps in today’s world there is a timeliness in looking again at Rodin’s sculpture and reflecting on Eve’s plight.

His model was, supposedly, one of two Italian sisters: ‘The dark one had sunburned skin, warm, with the bronze reflections of the women of sunny lands; her movements were quick and feline, with the lissomeness and grace of a panther; all the strength and splendour of muscular beauty, and that perfect equilibrium, that simplicity of bearing that makes great gesture.’