Audaciously, deceptively simple, The Mighty Hand takes a
quotidian part of a sculptor’s practice—modeling individual
hands, feet, and limbs—and transforms it, injecting a single
clenched hand with a primordial, otherworldly power. Rodin
was keenly attuned to the expressive potential of hands, and
here he reduced that potential to its elements. Muscles and
tendons seem to push against the skin’s limits in a dazzling
display of the charged, rough modeling that typified the artist’s
approach. The multihued patina, with traces of green and
bronze, provides an archaeological texture, as though the hand
were a prehistoric relic recently unearthed.