Rejected by the Jury, Later a Monument at Verdun: Call to Arms

Call to Arms was Rodin's entry for a competition to design monuments to the Republic and to the defense of Paris. For an unknown artist like Rodin at the time, winning a competition was one of the surest ways to make a name for himself, which is what drove him to enter.

In sculpting this piece, Rodin drew on two existing works for inspiration: the winged woman recalls François Rude's sculpture on the Arc de Triomphe, while the man beneath her echoes a Michelangelo sculpture housed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence.

Ultimately, though, this piece didn't win. The male figure, meant to symbolize a soldier, lacked any clear marker identifying him as one, and the winged woman's pose struck the judges as too violent. The sculpture itself was well made, but its tone simply didn't match what the competition was looking for. Later, once Rodin had become famous, this work was recast on a far larger scale than what you see here and erected as a monument in the northern French city of Verdun.