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NYC: Metropolitan Museum of Art – Auguste Rodin’s Burghers of Calais – Jacques de Wissant

Image by wallyg
Les Bourgeois de Calais (The Burghers of Calais) is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin. It serves as a monument to the heroism of six burghers in Calais during a siege by the England in the Hundred Years’ War in 1347.

After a victory in the Battle of Crécy, England’s King Edward III besieged Calais, an important French port on the English channel, and Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Which it did for a over a year. Philip failed to lift the siege and starvation eventually forced the city to parlay for surrender. Edward offered to spare the people of the Calais if any six of its top leaders would surrender themselves. Edward demanded that they walk out almost naked, wearing nooses around their necks and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first and five other burghers–Jean d’Aire, Jacques and Pierre de Wissant, Jean de Fiennes, Andrieu d’Andres–soon followed suit. Though the burghers expected to be executed, their lives were spared by the intervention of England’s Queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband by saying it would be a bad omen for her unborn child. Rodin depicts a larger than life Saint Pierre leading the envoy of emaciated volunteers to the city gates, prepared to meet their imminent mortality.

The monument was initially proposed by Omer Dewavrin, mayor of Calais, for the town’s square in 1884. Unusual in that monuments were usually reserved for victories, the town of Calais had long desired to recognize the sacrifices made by these altruistic men. Rodin’s controversial design echoed this intent–the burghers are not presented in a heroic manner, but sullen and worn. His innovative design initially presented the burghers at the same level as the viewers, rather than on a traditional pedestal, although until 1924 the city, against Rodin’s wishes, displayed it on an elevated base.

Other casts stand around the world–the garden of Musée Rodin, the Victoria Tower Gardens, in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in London; the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, the sculpture garden of the Smithsonian Hirshorn Museum in Washington D.C., the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Rodin Gallery in Seoul, and Glyptoteket in Copenhagen, to name a few. Some installations have the figures tightly grouped with contiguous bases, while others, like this one, have the figures separated. Some installations are elevated on pedestals, others are placed at ground level. At Stanford University’s Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, null, concealing the bottom few inches of the bases, and spaced such that viewers can walk between the figures. The museum claims this is how Rodin wished them to be displayed.

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Designed as a classical French garden and opened in 1990, the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court serves as a framework for the presentation of large Italian and French sculptures, originally intended for the outdoors, dating from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The arcaded south wall of the court was inspired by the Orangerie of Versailles, and the north wall incorporates the Museum’s 1888 Italianate facade and carriage entrance of granite and red brick.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s permanent collection contains more than two million works of art from around the world. It opened its doors on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under their guidance of John Taylor Johnston and George Palmer Putnam, the Met’s holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space. In 1873, occasioned by the Met’s purchase of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriot antiquities, the museum decamped from Fifth Avenue and took up residence at the Douglas Mansion on West 14th Street. However, these new accommodations were temporary; after negotiations with the city of New York, the Met acquired land on the east side of Central Park, where it built its permanent home, a red-brick Gothic Revival stone "mausoleum" designed by American architects Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mold. As of 2006, the Met measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet, more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building.

In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was ranked #17 on the AIA 150 America’s Favorite Architecture list.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was designated a landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1967. The interior was designated in 1977.

National Historic Register #86003556

Scratches in the kitchen

Image by Roberto Giannotti

If I run naked?

Image by Roberto Giannotti