Hand of God – by Auguste Rodin

The Hand of God – by Auguste Rodin

Modeled 1898, cast 1920s or earlier.

Exhibition: Rodin: Sculptor and Storyteller

Location: Art Institute of Chicago.

The sculpture evokes the biblical account of the creation of human kind, which Rodin imagined as an act of sculpting. The work depicts an embryonic couple, probably Adam and Eve, emerging from a formless mass cradled in God’s hand. Rodin distilled the story of its essential elements by reducing the figure of God to a single massive hand.

Hand of God – by Auguste Rodin / The work depicts an embryonic couple, probably Adam and Eve, emerging from a formless mass cradled in God’s hand.

The “Hand of God” sculpture depicts a biblical story of God creating Adam and Eve. The right hand of God holds a raw clump of earth from which two intertwined figures emerge. Eve on the side, and Adam wraps his hand around her head.

The Hand of God is very similar to Rodin’s other works: such as “The Cathedral,” “The Hand of the Devil,”, “Hands of Lovers,” and “Hand from the Tomb.”

During the 1880s and 1890s Rodin modeled hundreds of hands. Inspired by his collection of fragments from Antiquity and his studies of hands and limbs in motion Rodin created new works of art, such as The Hand of God and The Cathedral. Rodin created new sculptures by assembling fragments from his previous works. He kept an extensive repertory of plaster fragments in his studio.

The Hand of God illustrates the process of recycling forms. The hand in this sculpture first appeared as the right hand of Pierre Wissant in one of the figures in the monument, “The Burghers of Calais.”