PARIS.- Michelangelo (1475–1564) and Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), two unrivalled masters of Western sculpture, engage in a dialogue across the centuries. Their works, emblematic of the strength of the body and the depth of the soul, are here brought together for the first time, revealing a continuum between the two artists, marked by clear divisions.

The more than 200 works brought together by the exhibition highlight the issues of form and concept that drove the same ambition in both artists: to make manifest the body's inner energy. The body is thus revealed as the membrane that envelops the soul, a living thing weathering time and movement. We also explore the historic uses of motion in sculpture: how did the reinvention of antiquity and the ways bodies were used foreshadow the divisions of the 20th century?

Calling attention to the connections, borrowings and reinterpretations to be found in the works of Michelangelo and Rodin, the exhibition gives a close reading of the myths surrounding these two masters and proposes a new perspective on sculpture not as the making of forms, but as a laboratory for breaking new artistic ground. The works of the two masters are echoed by Mannerist pieces after Michelangelo (by Vincenzo Danti, Vincenzo de Rossi and Pierino da Vinci) as well as powerful contemporary works by Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Giuseppe Penone and Jana Sterbak, all of which show how this legacy remains as relevant as ever.

Bringing together pieces from the collections of the Louvre and the Musée Rodin and generously supplemented by loans from major international institutions, the exhibition associates marble, bronze, plaster, terracotta and cast works with a rich pictorial production. It winds through five major themes to present both artists, their inspiration, their use of materials and their favourite subjects, following the common threads of the expression of life and the representation of bodies.

This central theme is established from the start of the visit, which features five iconic sculptures – two masterpieces from the Louvre's collection, Michelangelo's Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave, and Auguste Rodin's Age of Bronze, Adam and Nude study of Jean d'Aire (from the Monument to the Burghers of Calais). Welcoming visitors into the exhibition, these bodies are animated with a powerful vital energy.

Two Legendary Artists

The first section presents the myths around the two sculptors. Their place in the art world is evidenced through posthumous portraits and productions, artistic homages and even relics. A selection of pieces inspired by their body of work demonstrates their respective artistic lineages – and shows Rodin's own debt to Michelangelo. The importance of the example Michelangelo set for Rodin is also put in the perspective of his formative journey to Florence in 1876, where he discovered the Chapel of Princes in the basilica of San Lorenzo, a total work of art by the 'magician' who lent him 'a little of his secrets', as he wrote to his companion Rose Beuret. Vincenzo Danti's Renaissance-era casts of the Allegories of Time from the Tombs of Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici bring into the exhibition these figures that are characteristic of Michelangelo's art.

Nature and Antiquity: Reinventing the Model

Nature and antiquity were the principal sources of inspiration for Michelangelo and Rodin – but, as we shall see, models are meant to be surpassed. This section features numerous sketches and studies that demonstrate a careful observation of human bodies and a sophisticated understanding of anatomy, which Michelangelo acquired through the practice of dissection, and Rodin through long hours spent studying live models. But the final figures they created went further than naturalistic representations, reconstructing anatomies to produce (in the case of Michelangelo) idealised bodies that would come to replace nature as a model for an entire generation of artists, and (in the case of Rodin) forms intended to be truer than life. Both artists greatly admired classical art and studied it in depth – Rodin was a lifelong collector of ancient pieces. They contended with this towering model and attempted to rival it.

For Giorgio Vasari, this contending was the reason for Michelangelo's very existence. At the heart of this section, we explore the rise of the torso as an artistic form: Michelangelo is thought to have refused to restore the Belvedere Torso, in recognition of its aesthetic integrity; for his part, Rodin was the first artist to design artworks consisting of only a torso, inaugurating one of the principal subjects of modern sculpture.

Non finito

Non finito is central to the exhibition's argument. This aesthetic, which characterised the works of Michelangelo and was harnessed by Rodin, consists in leaving evidence of the marks of artistic creation, as proof that the perceptible sculpture is only one step in an existing intangible form; in this, it uses the transient to make manifest the life that flows through bodies. On exceptional loan from the Casa Buonarotti, a small wooden crucifix illustrates the full power of Michelangelo's non finito, in close proximity with the Louvre's Slaves. This creative power over matter is condensed in the Hand of God: Rodin depicts in marble the divine hand modelling the bodies of Adam and Eve out of clay. Giuseppe Penone's Albero de 7 metri reveals the contemporary staying power of the non finito.

A selection of Michelangelo and Rodin's drawings in red chalk and stump illustrate how they used vibrating lines to suggest bodies in movement, echoing in two dimensions the surface effects produced by non finito in sculpture. Catching the light, this effect creates a soft halo around the marble, like a sfumato anchoring the artwork in its environment.

Bodies and Souls

Michelangelo and Rodin, in making the body the central subject of their artworks, showed that they both perceived it as animated by an intense inner life. Their figures were vessels for thought and dream, sometimes even in death. In Michelangelo's Saint Bartholomew, as in Rodin's Balzac, psyche leaves its mark on the body, as the soul takes form in the mortal coil. These works are powerfully paralleled in two contemporary works: Joseph Beuys's The Skin and Jana Sterbak's Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic. Anatomies and faces, postures and group compositions are all ways of expressing human passions and emotions, which permeate Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Rodin's Gates of Hell. These works are presented respectively through a Renaissance-era copy and a model. The Michelangelo-inspired sculptor Vincenzo Danti's great bronze relief, The Bronze Serpent, serves as another example of such artwork.

Energy and Life

The bodies that Michelangelo and Rodin created are alive because they are full of energy. This concept stands at the heart of the artists' sculptural concerns and makes up the thrust of the exhibition's last section. The flexibility of the figures imbues them with intense vitality, as demonstrated by the many serpentine figures in Michelangelo's drawings as well as Pierino da Vinci's Young River God in marble and Rodin's Inner Voice. The power of human figures appears in full bloom: Michelangelo's terribilità, represented by a cast of his Moses from the Paris École des Beaux-Arts collection, is paralleled by the magnetic presence of Rodin's Balzac. Though they are still, a radiance emanates from these powerful bodies. In other pieces, the two sculptors also used the positioning of bodies in space to the same effect. Vital energy is thus conveyed through the well orchestrated interplay of balance and imbalance, an incarnation of instability. This search for sculptural effect is echoed in the modern day by Bruce Nauman's video work Walking a Line, which comes at the end of the exhibition. Visitors are then invited to the rotunda for one last contemplation of the five sculptures which also marked the start of their visit: five bodies, nude and muscular, emotive and powerful – and, above all, alive.

EXHIBITION CURATORS

Chloé Ariot, Curator, Musée Rodin and Marc Bormand, Curator, Department of Sculptures, Musée du Louvre.