Pierre de Wiessant by Auguste Rodin (1887)
Calais for complete group; many casts of the group, the figure and the head around the world

A metallic statue of a woman with her head bowed and right hand raised to her forehead, standing on a base, with tears or water streaming down her face.

Pierre de Wiessant,
Bronze sculpure part
of sculptural group “The
Burghers of Calais”, 1887
by Auguste Rodin.

Rodin being one of my favorite sculptors, I have studied 1990s. I was well acquainted with The Burghers of Calais, and for this project, I focused on the Head of Pierre de Wissant.

According to Wikipedia, “In 1346, England’s Edward III, after a victory in the Battle of Crécy, laid siege to Calais, while Philip VI of France ordered the city to hold out at all costs. Philip failed to lift the siege, and starvation eventually forced the city to parley for surrender”.

“The contemporary chronicler Jean Froissart (ca. 1337 –ca. 1405) tells a story of what happened next: Edward offered to spare the people of the city if six of its leaders would surrender themselves to him, presumably to be executed. Edward demanded that they walk out wearing nooses around their necks, and carrying the keys to the city and castle. One of the wealthiest of the town leaders, Eustache de Saint Pierre, volunteered first, and five other burghers joined him. Saint Pierre led this envoy of volunteers to the city gates. It was this moment, and this poignant mix of defeat, heroic self-sacrifice, and willingness to face imminent death that Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.”16 Rodin made “two models and one study of Pierre de Wissant before the final sculpture. The first model shows the young man pointing to himself with the right hand, as if questioning his final destination. In the nude study he is no longer pointing to himself, but using his arm in a defensive manner.”17

I also drew on tales I had heard from my parents, who were teenagers in the 1940s in Greece, as well as my own reading about the period. I wanted to capture not the official headlines of the generals and the battles but rather the experience of the everyday Greek civilian: The privation, the famine, and the horror of that decade, played out in personal history.

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16. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, April 12). The Burghers of Calais. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:50, July 24, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Burghers_of_Calais&oldid=1082274422
17. Wikipedia contributors. (2021, September 26). Pierre de Wiessant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:49, July 24, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre_de_Wiessant&oldid=1046670685

Sculpture of a distressed young man's bust with a somber expression and closed eyes.

Head of Pierre de
Wiessant, Bronze,
by Auguste Rodin.