Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone (1880–81?): Art, History and Details

Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone (1880–81?) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A caryatid is a column in classical Greek architecture carved to resemble a female figure. Rodin originally designed Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone to serve as one of the figures on his monumental sculptural doorway The Gates of Hell. While Greek caryatids are typically draped, Rodin stripped the body of clothing and depicted the caryatid crushed under the weight of a stone, symbolically suggesting a state of physical suffering or emotional anguish. He exhibited Fallen Caryatid as an independent sculpture as early as 1883 and produced multiple versions in marble and bronze.

Object facts

• Title: Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone
• Date: 1880–81?
• Creator attribution: Auguste Rodin (French, 1840–1917)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 43.5 x 29.2 x 31.8 cm (17 1/8 x 11 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Sculpture 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1946.352

Collection credit

In memory of Ralph King, gift of Mrs. Ralph King; Ralph T. Woods, Charles G. King; and Frances King Schafer

Further reading listed by the museum

• Milliken, William. "Sculpture." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 34, no. 2 (February 1947): 25-26.
• Tacha, Athena. Rodin Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
• Tacha, Athena. A Supplement to Rodin Sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.