Several casts of Auguste Rodin's works accompanying this one. This work is based on a real historic event and real people. Unfortunately half of the names are unknown to the poster of this Waymark...but one of the figures was the Mayor Eustache de Saint Pierre. Another, Pierre de Wissant, has two separate sculptures of himself here which were studies for this work. A third, Jean De Fiennes, also has a sculpture here which was a study of this piece.
The life-sized piece depicts six thin men, all dejected or anguished and all dressed in tattered robes.
The Museum's website (
visit link)
adds:
"The Burghers of Calais, 1884-95
Auguste Rodin
French, 1840-1917
Bronze, Edition of 12, Cast No. 10
82-1/2 x 93-1/2 x 70-3/4 in. (209.6 x 237.5 x 179.7 cm)
Norton Simon Art Foundation
M.1968.04.S
© 2012 Norton Simon Art Foundation
On view
The Burghers of Calais depicts an episode from the history of the Hundred Years' War. In 1347, after the city of Calais had been under siege for eleven months, six prominent citizens offered their lives to the English king, Edward III, in return for his promise to spare the city. Upon hearing of their bravery, Queen Philippa interceded and obtained their release. In 1884, Rodin was commissioned by the city of Calais to produce a monument honoring the six burghers. Rodin rejected the established conventions of public sculpture and portrayed the men not as glorious heroes, but as troubled and isolated individuals brought together by their anguish and common purpose. He depicted the emaciated figures departing, dressed in tattered sackcloth, to surrender themselves to the English army. Features and proportions are distorted to intensify the expressiveness of the figures struggling with their conflicting thoughts of fear, indecision, anguish, and nobility."
and Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Les Bourgeois de Calais is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1889. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year...
The story goes that England's Edward III, after a 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.
Edward offered to spare the people of the city if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that 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.[1] 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 that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.
Although the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England's Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband to exercise mercy by claiming that their deaths would be a bad omen for her unborn child."
Wikipedia also indicates that under French law only 12 casts of the original were permitted after Rodin's death. The Norton Simon Museum indicates this is the ninth cast, but Wikipedia indicates it was the tenth...made in 1968. The original is still in Calais, France.