The Hand of God

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rodin presents the inchoate figures of Adam and Eve cradled in God’s hand. The composition is an homage to his revered "master" Michelangelo, the Renaissance artist whose unfinished figures materializing out of rough stone symbolize the process of artistic creation. In this work, Rodin boldly equates the generative hand of God with the ingenious hand of the sculptor. When the collector B. Gerald Cantor saw The Hand of God at the Met in 1945, it initiated what has been called a "magnificent obsession." Cantor’s support of scholarship and his unparalleled gifts to American and French museums helped to revitalize interest in Rodin in the second half of the twentieth century.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art