While exploring Calais (Maine), and Calais (France) in a recent BLOTT, we came across the incredible sculpture The Burghers of Calais and it’s amazing backstory.
The Story Behind the Famous Calais Sculpture
The Burghers of Calais is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin in twelve original castings and numerous copies. It commemorates an event during the Hundred Years’ War, when Calais, a French port on the English Channel, surrendered to the English after an eleven-month siege. The city commissioned Rodin to create the sculpture in 1884 and the work was completed in 1889.
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(c. 1337 – c. 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 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 with 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 which Rodin captured in his sculpture, scaled somewhat larger than life.
According to Froissart’s story, the burghers expected to be executed, but their lives were spared by the intervention of England’s queen, Philippa of Hainault, who persuaded her husband to exercise mercy by claiming their deaths would be a bad omen for her unborn child. – Wikipedia
Now imagine Elon Musk or Louis V. Gerstner taking one for the team. High probability of NO.
A replica of The Burghers of Calais appears in the Memorial Court of the Main Quad, on the Stanford University campus.
Rodin .v. Rodan
I once had a conversation with my sister-in-law where I was describing Rodan (arch-nemesis of Godzilla), and she thought I was talking about the sculptor Rodin. I did not correct her, and I left her with the false impression that I would not bring shame onto the family. But basically all it did was buy me some time.
So let’s clear a few things up.
François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917) was a French sculptor, generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as The Thinker, Monument to Balzac, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell. – Wikipedia
Google Image Search for “The Thinker” yields….
Rodan
Rodan (Japanese: ラドン, Hepburn: Radon) is a fictional monster, or kaiju, which first appeared as the title character in Ishirō Honda’s 1956 film Rodan….
Rodan is depicted as a colossal, prehistoric, irradiated species of Pteranodon…. It was changed to Rodan for English-speaking markets in order to avoid confusion with the element radon. However, in Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, the English version of the film used the original name Radon. – Wikipedia
And the Big Question
