Sculpture and Form

The Burghers of Calais

Rodin originally wanted the sculpture placed directly on the ground — no pedestal at all — so the figures would stand at eye level with passersby on the street, which scandalized the Calais city council in 1895 and got overruled for decades.

Auguste Rodin · 1888

Read history Open artist

Author

Auguste Rodin

Movement / period

Sculpture and Form

Medium

sculpture

Location

Musee Rodin, Paris

There are 13 authorized bronze casts of this group, spread across three continents, making it simultaneously present in Calais, London (Victoria Tower Gardens), Washington D.C., Tokyo, and elsewhere — which is unusual for a monumental sculpture of this scale.

Highlights

Facts & legends

Rodin originally wanted the sculpture placed directly on the ground — no pedestal at all — so the figures would stand at eye level with passersby on the street, which scandalized the Calais city council in 1895 and got overruled for decades.
There are 13 authorized bronze casts of this group, spread across three continents, making it simultaneously present in Calais, London (Victoria Tower Gardens), Washington D.C., Tokyo, and elsewhere — which is unusual for a monumental sculpture of this scale.
The six figures show no hero and no hierarchy: Rodin gave each man a different emotional state — despair, resignation, defiance, numbness — and refused to designate a leader, which was deeply radical for a public monument in 1889.
The historical event it depicts actually happened in 1347, when six wealthy citizens of Calais volunteered to surrender to Edward III of England with nooses around their necks to save their starving city — and were spared at the last moment by the intercession of Queen Philippa of Hainault.
Rodin worked on the commission for six years starting in 1884, and during that time produced hundreds of individual studies of hands, feet, and heads separately — the oversized, knotted hands of the figures were studied independently and are some of the most reproduced details in his entire body of work.
The London cast in Victoria Tower Gardens was placed there in 1915 after a fierce parliamentary debate — Westminster initially refused the work because it was seen as too grim and too French for a site near the Houses of Parliament.

Source: Wikidata

More details How Rodin turned a civic monument into a procession of six people, rejected a single hero, and fought to place bronze bodies among ordinary passers-by.

Six keys from a besieged city

A medieval chronicle supplied heroes, but Rodin refused the triumphant pose

In 1347, after a long siege during the Hundred Years' War, six leading citizens of Calais carried the city's keys to Edward III. According to Jean Froissart, they went barefoot in shirts with ropes around their necks, expecting execution. Queen Philippa secured their pardon. Calais remembered the episode as collective sacrifice.

When the city commissioned Rodin in 1884–85, it expected legible civic heroism. He chose neither rescue nor celebration but the walk toward presumed death. No figure yet knows he will survive. Bronze preserves the psychological interval between decision and sentence.

No single protagonist

Six bodies share a scale while each mind remains alone

Eustache de Saint-Pierre volunteered first; Jean d'Aire carries the great key; Pierre and Jacques de Wissant, Andrieu d'Andres and Jean de Fiennes each inhabit fear differently. They stand together without offering one another eye contact or comforting touch. Fate makes the group, not a leader's gesture.

Rodin modelled each man nude before adding the heavy tunic. Drapery amplifies rather than hides bodily strain. Enlarged hands and feet violate academic elegance but give weight to the key, slowness to the march and exposure to fear.

A monument without a pedestal

Rodin wanted viewers on the same ground as the condemned

A conventional nineteenth-century monument lifted its hero above the square. Rodin proposed setting the group directly on the paving, where passers-by would meet a living chain of suffering. He also considered the opposite extreme: a very high base that would silhouette the bodies against the sky. Both rejected the decorative middle.

Calais unveiled the bronze on 3 June 1895 on a compromise pedestal, years after the model was finished in 1889. Later installations altered height and setting again. Place changes the work: we either admire remote heroes or find ourselves among frightened people.

Hands speak more clearly than faces

Each gesture breaks the unity of legend

Jean d'Aire grips the key with both hands as if carrying surrender's physical weight. Eustache lets his arms fall; one Wissant brother raises a hand toward his face while another turns as though hearing the city behind. Their motions never form theatrical unison, and there is no correct front.

Walking around the group changes the sequence of feeling. Bodies conceal one another, then gaps suddenly open. Rodin replaced a fixed façade with editing in real space: the visitor's steps assemble the story. A single photograph must therefore diminish it.

An original that exists in multiples

Bronze casts do not behave as simple copies

Rodin completed the plaster group, while bronze allowed authorised casts in Calais, Paris, London and elsewhere. Form remains, but weather, architecture and pedestrian movement alter every encounter. For the London version Rodin even tested a high placement on five-metre scaffolding in his Meudon garden.

Multiplicity extends the idea rather than weakening it. The Burghers belong to no single ideal viewpoint or pedestal. A monument about a group of separate individuals becomes different in each city, repeatedly asking how close a public is willing to let another person's fear come.

Official sources