The Age of Bronze is Rodin’s first masterpiece. Exhibited at the Salon in 1877 when he was thirty-six, the work established Rodin as an independent artist. It remained a touchstone throughout his career. He created a bust and versions in two other sizes and until 1905 issued casts, in both bronze and plaster, only by special order.

Rodin began work on The Age of Bronze with a scrupulous rendering after a model and then refined the image following examples of antique and Renaissance sculpture. Comparing photographs of the model (the Belgian soldier Auguste Neyt) with the sculpture itself reveals the perfection and truth to nature of Rodin’s modelling. The comparison equally demonstrates that the artist subjected nature to myriad idealizations. For example, Rodin made the legs and lower torso of the figure slimmer than those of the model, and he also made the head somewhat smaller. Such details, which recall Hellenistic sculptures Rodin had seen in the Louvre and in Italy, confirm his remark that he found inspiration for his figure in a Greek Apollo.

Begun in October 1875 while Rodin was working with Antoine van Rasbough in Brussels, "my figure," as Rodin referred to the work in his letters to Rose Beuret, was finished late in 1876 after he returned from Italy. In plaster and provisionally titled The Vanquished One, the work went on view at a club in Brussels, the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire, in January 1877. 

Critics admired the superb technique but found the figure so true to life that one writer suggested parts of the work had been produced by moulage (body casting).

This accusation followed the work, now titled The Age of Bronze, to its exhibition in that year’s Paris Salon, which opened in April. Again critics admired Rodin’s immense talent but felt uneasy with its application.