Study for the Secret – The Secret

Starting with The Shades, an assemblage of three identical figures placed at the top of The Gates of Hell before 1886, fragmentation and multiplication guided Rodin in his search for new rhythms. He used this approach for hands, “faces without eyes and without voice, but which see and talk” (Focillon), of which the Musée Rodin in Paris, France has numerous studies. “Rodin is the sculptor of hands as Verlaine is their poet”, said Gustave Kahn.

The Cathedral of 1908 (see below) is an assemblage of two right hands shaping the void into a Gothic arch. The two hands of the marble version of the Secret (1909), also right hands, enclose a casket, illustrating the title of the work through a traditional iconographic reference.

But the starting point for The Secret is a much smaller study of a pair of delicate hands moving freely, which is more like a dance figure without any symbolic resonance.