Auguste Rodin completed The Age of Bronze in 1877, and the work became his breakthrough sculpture.
Rodin exhibited the figure in Brussels and Paris under the title The Age of Bronze. Its unusually lifelike proportions caused critics to accuse him of using a cast from a living model, a charge known in French as surmoulage. Rodin denied the allegation and supplied documentation about his model, Auguste Neyt, a Belgian soldier.
The controversy ultimately increased public attention to the sculpture. The figure was originally displayed holding a spear, but Rodin removed the weapon so that the work would suggest awakening humanity rather than a specific warrior. That decision also helped create the sculpture’s later association with a broad, symbolic human subject.
The Age of Bronze is sometimes confused with Rodin’s later Monument to the Burghers of Calais or The Thinker. It is an independent early work and predates both major projects.