The French city of Calais commissioned Auguste Rodin’s monument The Burghers of Calais. The work commemorates six citizens who, according to a medieval account, offered themselves as hostages to save the city after its surrender to Edward III of England in 1347.
Rodin completed the sculpture in 1889, and it was installed in Calais in 1895. Rather than showing a single heroic leader, he represented six different men burdened by fear, grief, and responsibility. Their varied poses make the monument unusually psychologically complex.
The city originally expected a conventional monument on a pedestal. Rodin’s preference for placing the figures close to ground level was controversial, although later installations have followed his more direct presentation. The sculpture is now considered one of his major public works.