Rodin called Man with the Broken Nose “the first good piece
of modeling I ever did.” It was one of his earliest successes,
and he returned to the broken-nose motif throughout
his career. The success was hard-fought, however, as the
masklike plaster version he submitted to the 1865 Salon
was rejected. The composition would gain acceptance
only a decade later, when he produced a marble version.
According to legend, Rodin modeled its craggy features on
a local handyman named Bibi, but the sculpture resonates
with unmistakable echoes of Rodin’s hero Michelangelo,
who famously suffered a broken nose as a teenager.