"Auguste Rodin -- the greatest sculptor of the nineteenth century -- was also probably the greatest since Michelangelo, whose genius was a lifelong inspiration to him. Though the astonishing lifelike quality of his sculpture (first apparent in Bronze Age, 1877) was in total defiance of current academic conventions, Rodin did not have to face the prolonged and bitter hostility meted out to the Impressionist painters who were his contemporaries, and in later life he became a famous and widely respected figure... In this important new monograph, Bernard Champigneulle analyses Rodin's great significance as an innovator in sculpture. For Rodin created an entirely new form -- the detail considered as a finished work -- and in doing so exercised a lasting influence on his successors, who were affected equally profoundly by his emotional expressiveness, his power of characterization and the subtlety of his modelling. M. Champigneulle combines a searching reappraisal of Rodin's achievement with a revealing account of his personality and of his troubled personal life"--