It took him 18 years to save enough money to visit Italy but when he did, in 1875, his visceral response to the art of Donatello and Michelangelo proved to be the key that unlocked his imagination. The Age of Bronze is a sensuous male nude so lifelike that when it was shown in the Salon of 1877 rumours circulated that it was not a work of fine art at all, but cast from the body of a living model.
To eyes accustomed to the conventions of beaux-arts classicism, the sculpture was shocking because it peeled off a layer of artifice to show the human body as it really is, not as his viewers expected to see it.
Always so sexy and real...
You must be logged in to post wall comments. Please Login or Signup (free).