Head of Baudelaire


This bronze-cast sculpture is of French poet Charles Baudelaire. The piece was made by French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Baudelaire was born in 1821 and died in 1867, while Rodin was born about twenty years later in 1840 but lived until 1917. Although the men were nineteen years apart in age, they lived in Paris at roughly the same time. Both of them participated in the artistic movements of “La Belle Époque,” the era when Paris became famous for its vibrant art and glittering style. Rodin made this sculpture as a tribute to Baudelaire about thirty years after the poet’s death, when his poetry started to gain widespread international attention.