Executed for the eldest figure of The Burghers of Calais in 1885, the Head of Eustache de St. Pierre is a visage weighed down by age and by the sacrifice he thinks will end his life.* If St. John the Baptist Preaching is the epitome of Rodin’s early style, then the Head of Eustache de St. Pierre is the embodiment of the master’s mature technique. Rodin has transformed the features of his model, the painter Jean-Charles Cazin. The modelling is broad, while the surface elements and flesh are suggested rather than detailed.

In keeping with the historical role of Eustache de St. Pierre as a man of the late Middle Ages, Rodin wished to create a figure in the image of a prophet by the late-fourteenth-century Netherlandish sculptor Claus Sluter or a tomb figure from a French cathedral.

* Eustache de St. Pierre was one of the six burghers of Calais who offered their lives to King Edward III of England in exchange for lifting the siege of their city. Rodin found the source for his monument in the events of 1347 as related by Jean Froissart in his chronicles. The lives of the burghers were spared through the intervention of Edward’s queen, although not before they had been marched to the king’s camp in extreme dishevelment and torment.