Eternal Spring

Mediums: marble.
Location: the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia).

Like many other sculptures of this period, the composition was conceived as a part of the large-scale work “The Gates of Hell,” which the Paris government ordered Rodin to make. The plot was taken from the fifth book of Ovid’s poem “Fasta”, in which the beautiful nymph Flora was abducted by Zephyr, the god of the west wind. The beauty of young naked bodies, their flexibility and plastic fascinate those who look at this picture. Thanks to the youth and sincerity of the feelings of the heroes, the vivid eroticism that permeates the whole composition does not cause a sensation of something obscene but rather suggests the harmony of loving hearts in their fusion with nature.