(Paris 1840–1917 Meudon)
Minotaur, agrandissement, version d’après le marbre, bronze with brown and green patina, signed and numbered A. Rodin 2/8, inscribed with foundry mark Georges Rudier /Fondeur Paris, 56.4 x 60 x 65 cm. Conceived ca. 1883–1885, this version obtained by overmoulding of the marble of 1903, this bronze version cast ca. 1985 – 1986.

This work will be included in the forthcoming Auguste Rodin Catalogue Critique de l ’Oeuvre Sculpté currently being prepared by the Comité Auguste Rodin at Galerie Brame and Lorenceau under the direction of Jérome Le Blay under the archive number 1997–13 2B.

Provenance:
Claude Cueto, Paris
Christie’s New York, 9 November 2006, lot 325
Private Collection, Croatia

Exhibited:
Andros, Basile and Elisa Goulandris Foundation Auguste Rodin-Camille Claudel, July – September 1996, page 157, n. 19, ill. pl. 20

Literature:
G. Grappe, Catalogue du Musée Rodin, Paris, 1927, p. 79, n. 207 (marble version illustrated, n. 206)
I. Jianou and C. Goldscheider, Rodin, Paris, 1967, p. 100
J. L. Tancock, The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, Philadelphia, 1976, pp. 270 – 273 (terracotta version illustrated, p. 271, marble version illustrated, p. 273).
J. de Caso and P. B. Sanders, Rodin’s Sculpture: A Critical Study of the Spreckels Collection, California Legion Honor, San Francisco, 1977, pp. 105 – 108
C. Lampert, Rodin, Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1986, pp. 88, 215 – 216 (illustrated, pl. 156).
A. E. Elsen, Rodin’s Art: The Rodin Collection of Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, New York, 2003, pp. 510 – 512 (another cast illustrated, pp. 510 – 511).

Auguste Rodin, one of the most famous sculptors, developed a radically new approach to his art. He created structured and naturalistic forms that stand out from the idealized and mythological sculptures of the past.

In the present work, Rodin did not only illustrate the myth of the minotaur in his sculpture, he offered the opportunity of speculation about what may have happened before and could happen after the situation depicted. The figure shows no violent seduction and the nymph has no terrified look or frightened gesture. The minotaur is seated on a rock, staring open-mouthed at the nymph’s hair. His left hand is holding her elbow, while with his right hand he embraces her extended right thigh, where it met the left hand of the nymph. Although the nymph is raising her shoulder and with the whole body she is leaning against her left side, it seems, that she has no inclination to rebuff her horned seducer. Her right leg is slung over his, but with her foot pressing against the ground, she seems to avert his embrace. But her right hand is simply lying on her own thigh and her facial expression shows rather a frown than fear. Minotaur is a highly erotic and sexually charged work. (Elsen 2003: 510)

Rodin drew inspiration for the creation of the Minotaur, designed between 1883 and 1885, from several sources, particularly Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which he greatly admired. Book II, depicting Zeus’s transformation into a white bull with golden horns in order to kidnap Europa, as well as Book VIII in which the King of Crete, Minos, delivers seven young men and seven young women to his bull-headed son imprisoned in a labyrinth, are believed to be key references. Several historians also link the Minotaur to Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem, L’ après-midi d’un faune (1875), as Rodin gave Mallarmé a plaster cast of the Minotaur in 1893.
Initially designed at a height of 33 centimetres, Rodin made a marble sculpture of the Minotaur in May 1903 for the German coIIector Karl-Ernst Osthaus. As was his custom, Rodin kept several plaster casts of the marble, two of which are now in the Rodin Museum and one of which was given to the journalist and art critic Maurice Guillemot (1859–1931). Among the many letters exchanged between Guillemot and Rodin from 1884 onwards and preserved in the archives of the Rodin Museum, we find mention of a Minotaur, material unspecified, in a letter dated August 1905. It was from this plaster cast in Maurice Guillemot’s former collection that a bronze edition was made after 1985, at the Georges Rudier foundry, starting with number 2/8. (Comité Rodin)

Minotaur is one of the sculptures of Rodin often exhibited: it first recorded exhibition was in Munich (1896), thereafter it was shown in Vienna (1898), The Hague (1899), Paris (1900, 1910, 1917), Potsdam (1903), Düsseldorf (1904) and Barcelona (1907). The sculpture was exhibited under different titles like ‘Faun and Woman’, ‘Satyr and Nymph’ or ‘Jupiter Taurus’. (Elsen 2003: 510; Tancock 1976: 270)

Rodin himself preferred the title ‘The Minotaur’, referring to mythology. After the wedding of Minos and Pasiphaë and her union with a bull, the Minotaur is born. Each year the Athens have to sacrifice him seven maids and seven young men until he is finally beaten by Theseus. With the title ‘The Minotaur’, the composition of Rodin shows the Minotaur with one of his sacrifice. (Tancock 1976: 270)