Pair of Standing Nude Male Figures Demonstrating the Principles of Contrapposto according to Michelangelo and Phidias

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rodin modeled these clay sketches as demonstrations of contrapposto—a fundamental pose in which the body responds to bearing its weight on a single leg. Each figure stands in a manner typical of works by the famous sculptor after whom it is named. The version after the ancient Phidias captures the calm physical ease characteristic of classical sculpture. The Michelangelo figure, slumped and twisted inward, expresses the psychological intensity resulting from a more contorted Renaissance contrapposto. In 1911 Rodin presented these sketches to the American sculptor and philanthropist Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. Later, the works belonged to the greatest late twentieth-century collectors of Rodin’s sculpture, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art