Rodin’s Egypt

A richly illustrated exploration of how ancient Egyptian art stirred Rodin’s imagination and inspired his sculpture

Celebrated as one of the fathers of modern European sculpture, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) created expressive and emotive human bodies in works that abandoned narrative and embraced the subject and materiality of his medium. While his revolutionary approach to the body broke from neoclassical tradition, he revered the works of antiquity, in which he saw the truest expressions of nature. Rodin was particularly enthralled by the art of ancient Egypt, amassing a collection of more than 1,000 Egyptian objects. Rodin’s Egypt--the companion volume to an exhibition at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World--reveals the profound influence Egyptian art had on Rodin’s work and the advent of modernity in European sculpture.

Illustrated with some 120 color images, the book traces Rodin’s antiquity collecting; places masterpieces by Rodin in dialogue with Egyptian sculpture, statuettes, and reliefs; and reveals Rodin’s conception of the human form as a logical continuation of ancient Egyptian artistic canons. The book also illuminates how Rodin’s work provides new perspectives on the body in ancient Egypt, enriching conversations on corporeality across the centuries.

Contributors include Élisabeth David, Bénédicte Garnier, Dimitri Laboury, Alessio Delli Castelli, Faustine Boulay, and Carl Walsh.

Distributed for the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University

Exhibition Schedule
Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
November 19, 2025-March 15, 2026

Bénédicte Garnier is curator of the exhibition Rodin’s Egypt and oversees the antiquities collection at the Musée Rodin in Paris.