Giganti (Tête de brigand)

Bold features and a wild head of hair characterize this portrait of a man known as Giganti—after the name of the model—or as Tête de brigand (Head of a Bandit), which Camille Claudel, sister of the poet Paul Claudel, exhibited at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français in 1885. This was the same year she first entered Auguste Rodin’s studio, which also marked the beginning of an inspiring, but tragic, love affair between the two artists. Unlike the bronze casts of the Giganti at the Musée Thomas-Henri in Cherbourg and at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille, the Bremen piece has been signed in the bronze cast with “A. Rodin.” But both the romantic expression, which goes beyond Rodin’s sculptural approach, and the painterly application of the brownish black patina reveal the Bremen cast to be a work by Claudel.