When the city of Buenos Aires invited Rodin to create a monument to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811–1888), the artist proposed to sculpt both a statue and a symbolic base. Rodin had already experimented with this approach in his Monument to Claude Lorraine, on view nearby.

He portrayed Sarmiento, president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874 and a famed advocate for public education, striding forward, looking to the future. The pedestal, which still resides with the version of the statue in Buenos Aires, depicts the story of the god Apollo vanquishing the Python, an allegory for Sarmiento’s victory over ignorance and illiteracy.