All That's Left After a Monument Fell Through: The Head of Baudelaire

This piece is Rodin's sculpted head of the poet Baudelaire. Baudelaire was one of France's most celebrated poets, and his poetry collection The Flowers of Evil caused a sensation when it was published. Rodin greatly admired Baudelaire as a writer, and when he was commissioned to create a monument honoring the poet after his death, he accepted readily and began work on the sculpture.

Not long after he started, though, the monument project itself fell apart, leaving only this head as the finished result. For this piece, Rodin used a model whose features resembled Baudelaire's own.