The Easel

Face to Face

On the centenary of Rodin’s death New York’s Met has mounted a huge show. Rodin’s career was slow to get going but this didn’t dent his confidence. He was, as one critic puts it, “a man of nineteenth century amplitude and not twentieth century doubt”. His portrayal of skin, his choice of poses were so modern that he “wrenched figurative sculpture … and sent it tumbling into modernity … the greatest sculptor since Bernini.”