L’Idole éternelle

(1889)

This work’s title says it all: female beauty constituted Rodin’s principal source of inspiration. As far as subject and composition are concerned, he seems to have been influenced by the sculpture ‘Sakountala’ that Camille Claudel had modelled some years earlier. The writer Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the following about The Eternal Idol : « Always the same… enchanting strength… You dare nog assign a single meaning to it (as is so often the case with Rodin). It has thousands of meanings ».