AFTER AUGUSTE RODIN, FRENCH, 1840 - 1917, THE AGE OF BRONZE, A 20TH CENTURY CAST AFTER MODEL FROM 1877 PATINATED BRONZE, THE NUDE PORTRAYED CONTRAPPOSTO With head inclined, eyes closed and lips slightly parted, the right arm raised to meet the head, the left hand loosely forming a fist, inscribed ?A. Rodin?. (h 51cm x base 15cm x 15cm) N.B. Rodin created The Age of Bronze in 1877, using a young Belgian soldier as his model. This was the French sculptor's first full-scale figure. The sculptor had just returned from a journey to Italy, and was greatly influenced by Michelangelo Buonarotti's famous Dying Slave, whose pose, specifically the raised arm, is recalled in Rodin's bronze. The sculpture's lifelikeness allegedly resulted in Rodin having to prove that he had not cheated by simply making moulds directly from his model's body, but that he had really modelled it himself from drawings. Though Rodin was strongly influenced by models from the Renaissance and Antiquity, his incredible attention to naturalism of body and form, often rendered in highly textured surfaces and dynamic poses, shows a move away from the more rigid Neoclassical tradition and towards a striking modernity