Rodin almost obsessively explored the expressive power of hands, using them to convey an infinite variety of emotions and experiences. They were both artworks in themselves and studies for his public monuments, and he considered them as important as expressions on a figure’s face.
Enlarged hands or those swollen by age or disease were main components of figural sculptures such as The Burghers of Calais or The Helmet Maker’s Wife. He often reused, reorientated, and repurposed hands, apparent in the Burghers where a hand with an open palm and outstretched index finger appears two times in the composition—once on the figure of Jacques de Wissant and again on that of Pierre de Wissant.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), who was for a time Rodin’s secretary, wrote: “There are among the works of Rodin’s hands, single small hands, which without belonging to a body, are alive. Hands that rise, irritated and in wrath; hands whose five bristling fingers seem to bark like the five jaws of a dog of Hell.”
