The Age of Bronze

The Age of Bronze
French: L'âge d'airain
The Age of Bronze, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2006).
Artist	Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)
Year	1877 (first exhibited)
Type	Statue
Medium	Bronze
Dimensions	Life size

The Age of Bronze (French: L'âge d'airain) is a bronze statue by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). The figure is of a life-size nude male, 72 in. (182.9 cm) high. Rodin continued to produce casts of the statue for several decades after it was modelled in 1876.

Rodin had a Belgian soldier pose for the statue, keeping photographs which survive (in the Rodin Museum). The pose partly derives from Michelangelo's Dying Slave in the Louvre Museum, which has the elbow raised above the head.^{[citation needed]}

When the statue was first exhibited at the 1877 Salon in Paris, France, Rodin was falsely accused of having made the statue by casting a living model, a charge that was vigorously denied. This charge benefited Rodin, though, because people were so eager to see this for themselves.^{[citation needed]}

Casts of the statue can be found in many museums, including:

• 
  Plaster from 1877
• 
  Plaster, detail
• 
  Bronze cast
• 
  Bronze cast from 1876/1877 in Lyon
• 
  Detail of the bronze cast in the National Gallery of Canada, cast in 1901

• List of sculptures by Auguste Rodin
• 1877 in art

• Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette; Judrin, Claude; Vassalo, I. (1997). Vers l'âge d'airain, Rodin en Belgique: Exposition. Paris: Musée Rodin editions. ISBN 978-2-901428-60-2.

• The Age of Bronze, Analysis and Critical Reception
• The Age of Bronze at the Musée Rodin
• The Age of Bronze at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Media related to The Bronze Age by Auguste Rodin at Wikimedia Commons