Auguste Rodin
The Cathedral, 1908/ cast 1920-1929
Cast bronze
Gift of Carl D. Lobell
Hands feature prominently in the career of French sculptor Auguste Rodin. After his death, drawers full of dozens of small plaster hands that he sculpted were found in his studio. Hands are the most free and mobile part of our body. Unencumbered by gravity, they twist, turn, and circle through space. As such, hands often express emotion in the artist’s figurative works, such as his renowned Thinker. And the marks left by the artist’s hands and the tools they held activate the surfaces of his sculptures. Small wonder, then, that Rodin saw analogies to architecture and even spirituality in hands.
Rodin changed the title of this bronze, originally called The Arch of Alliance, to The Cathedralafter the publication of his book about Gothic cathedrals in 1914. The oval formed by the delicately touching fingers echo the soaring, pointed arches of a Gothic church, and the individual fingers resemble the reinforced segments of a Gothic ceiling, called ribs. The unseen bones that support our torsos gave those ribs their name, as the unseen bones of our hands support their movements.
The appendages also bring to mind the spirituality associated with churches. They recall hands raised or clasped in prayer. The hands belong to two different people, as they are both right hands. This could suggest that it is through our relationships that we find hope and meaning. However, the sculpture could have a less positive reading. After all, there is empty space, a void, between the palms.