“Les Bourgeois de Calais” by Auguste Rodin from the Rodin Museum
One of the versions of the famous sculptural group “Les Bourgeois de Calais” from French Auguste Rodinwhich was exhibited in a Glasgow park in the late 1940s is missing, an association responsible for managing cultural places in the Scottish city reported on Monday.
The plaster sculpture was exhibited outdoors at Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow between June 25 and September 30, 1949 and suffered “damage” at the time. “She is currently missing,” the organization Glasgow Life said.
The museums managed by this association “have spent more than two decades compiling an inventory of the objects in their collections and have found that registered pieces now appear to be untraceable,” the organization said.
“Les Bourgeois de Calais” by Auguste Rodin from Victoria Tower Park
The bronze sculpture group “Les Bourgeois de Calais” was requested from Rodin in 1884 by this French city to pay tribute to the six citizens who, in 1347, at the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War against England, offered to sacrifice their lives to save the inhabitants of the besieged Gallic Population. The original copy was delivered to Calais in 1895.
Other versions of this set exist, for example, in the Rodin Museum in Paris or in the Victoria Tower garden near the British Parliament in London, to which the missing one in Glasgow should be added.
Gathered on the same base, the six figures are dressed in a tunic, have a rope around their neck and are barefoot, each in a different pose to represent different emotions such as despair, confidence or resignation.
The survey comes weeks after the crisis at the British Museum due to the disappearance of more than 2,000 pieces (Europa Press/Contact/Vuk Valcic)
According to the British newspaper The Times, a further 1,750 objects disappeared from these Scottish museums, including pieces of gold related to Mary I of Scotland, who ruled in the 16th century.
This discovery came a few weeks after the British Museum in London admitted the theft of thousands of pieces from its holdings, leading to the resignation of its director.
According to the BBC, the institution Museum Wales, which manages seven national museums in Wales, also found that around 2,000 objects were missing from its collections, although according to the organization itself many of them could and “are” simply “misclassified”. can be found.” as the inventory progresses.
Source: AFP