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The Centauress

Modeled c. 1887; cast 1925
Artist/maker: Auguste Rodin, French, 1840 - 1917. Cast by the founder Alexis Rudier, Paris, 1874 - 1952

The Centauress is a provocative variation on the traditional equestrian monument. Instead of a hero mounted on a horse, the heroine and the horse have become one. Rodin combined two previous works in the design: The horse comes from an unrealized plan for a sculpture of a Chilean general. He adapted the woman from a male figure in The Gates from Hell.


Why create this amalgam? Rodin described a struggle between humanity’s “two natures. . . . An image of the soul whose ethereal impulses remain miserably imprisoned in the corporeal mire!”

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Object Details

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