Eve

Artist Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)

Place of OriginFrance

Dateoriginal about 1881 (this cast 1910)

Dimensions68 1/2 × 19 × 22 in. (174 × 48.3 × 55.9 cm)

MediumBronze

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1952.92

On View

Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion (2444 Monroe Street), Glass Study Room GP

Label TextLike The Thinker (see Gallery 33), this figure of the biblical first woman was originally planned as part of Auguste Rodin’s monumental, unfinished set of bronze doors, The Gates of Hell. Eve and a corresponding figure of Adam were to flank the doors as the perpetrators of Original Sin. With deliberate echoes of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, Rodin’s Eve communicates her shame at disobeying God through her pose. Trying to hide her body and face, she seems to turn in on herself. The rough, expressive surface and boldly modeled form clearly retain the evidence of the freely-worked plaster model, adding to the emotional and psychological intensity of the figure.Published ReferencesPhaidon Press, London, Rodin, 1951, pl. 22.

Elsen, Albert E., Rodin, New York, Museum of Modern Art, p. 51.

Arnason, H. Harvard, History of Modern Art, New York, 1968, p. 58, fig. 75, p. 60.

Butler, Ruth, in The Romantics to Rodin, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, p. 336 (also cf. 335).

Ambrosini, Lynne, Rodin: The Cantor Gift to the Brooklyn Museum, 1987, p. 150 (TMA cast).