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Lot Essay
In Greek mythology, the centaur is a creature with the head, torso, and arms of a man and the body of a horse. With the exception of Chiron, the mentor of Heracles and the tutor of Asclepius, the god of medicine, these creatures were wild and lawless, and were known for lustfulness and drunkenness.
According to John Tancock the subject of the centaur held a special interest for Rodin. "There are many representations of this figure in the early 'black' drawings, and, according to [Georges] Grappe, in one of the first versions of The Gates of Hell a troop of centaurs formed a decorative frieze framing the central panels. On the two bas-reliefs which Rodin intended to place low down on the doors the crying heads in the center were flanked by representations of centaurs carrying off the struggling bodies of women. In the final version of The Gates a centaur can be seen three-quarters of the way up the left-hand decorative pilaster, among the inhabitants of Limbo" (op. cit., p. 200).
In Rodin's La centauresse, the artist depicted this creature with an unspecified gender; the head is male, and the torso is female. Like many other figures in the artist's oeuvre, the sculpture is a composite of several other works of this period: the female torso is related to the male torso in Fugit Amor (Tancock, no. 20-4), and the body of the horse it taken from a project for a monument to the Chilean general Patrick Lynch (Tancock, no. 20-1).
At one time Rodin called this sculpture Ame et corps. The composite nature of the sculpture effectively expresses the human form or soul straining to emerge from the confines of the animal body. As Albert Elsen has noted, "Although not citing The Centauress as a specific example of what he had in mind, in 1907 Rodin talked to an unidentified reporter and seemed to be describing his intentions for this work: '[The artist] must celebrate that poignant struggle which is the basis of our existence and which brings to grips the body and the soul. Nothing is more moving than the maddened beast, perishing in lust and begging vainly for mercy from an insatiable passion'" (op. cit., 2003, p. 514).
According to John Tancock the subject of the centaur held a special interest for Rodin. "There are many representations of this figure in the early 'black' drawings, and, according to [Georges] Grappe, in one of the first versions of The Gates of Hell a troop of centaurs formed a decorative frieze framing the central panels. On the two bas-reliefs which Rodin intended to place low down on the doors the crying heads in the center were flanked by representations of centaurs carrying off the struggling bodies of women. In the final version of The Gates a centaur can be seen three-quarters of the way up the left-hand decorative pilaster, among the inhabitants of Limbo" (op. cit., p. 200).
In Rodin's La centauresse, the artist depicted this creature with an unspecified gender; the head is male, and the torso is female. Like many other figures in the artist's oeuvre, the sculpture is a composite of several other works of this period: the female torso is related to the male torso in Fugit Amor (Tancock, no. 20-4), and the body of the horse it taken from a project for a monument to the Chilean general Patrick Lynch (Tancock, no. 20-1).
At one time Rodin called this sculpture Ame et corps. The composite nature of the sculpture effectively expresses the human form or soul straining to emerge from the confines of the animal body. As Albert Elsen has noted, "Although not citing The Centauress as a specific example of what he had in mind, in 1907 Rodin talked to an unidentified reporter and seemed to be describing his intentions for this work: '[The artist] must celebrate that poignant struggle which is the basis of our existence and which brings to grips the body and the soul. Nothing is more moving than the maddened beast, perishing in lust and begging vainly for mercy from an insatiable passion'" (op. cit., 2003, p. 514).