Auguste Rodin, now in his forty-sixth year,…

Auguste Rodin, now in his forty-sixth year, receives an order for the monument to novelist Victor Hugo for the Panthéon, France's hall of its great men.

Now involved passionately with Camille Claudel, his student, collaborator, model and mistress, Rodin begins to execute sculptures of couples in the throes of desire.

The most sensuous of these is Le Baiser (1886; The Kiss; Musée Rodin, Paris), originally conceived as the figures of Paolo and Francesca for The Gates of Hell. (Sometimes considered his masterpiece, it exposes him to numerous scandals.)

Although Rodin has always prepared his models in clay and left the execution in stone to assistants, it was inevitable that the translucent nature of the marble surface would engage the sculptor's attention.

When properly exhibited with light partly from the rear, Le Baiser appears to glow with the incandescence of the subject's emotional intensity.