Young girl embraced by a marble ghost

In the words of Hélène Pinet, “Photography enabled Rodin to stand back and consider his work and he made good use of it. Judging a sculpture from a distance led him to make some amendments, or pentimenti, on the photographic reproductions of his sculptures,” (Pinet, 2007).

Using a pencil to retouch the photo taken by Eugène Druet of the marble Young Girl embraced by a Marble Ghost, Rodin once again happily reinterpreted his own works, as he had done with his paper assemblages or in the reworked versions of his earlier drawings. Here, he placed the marble group upright, instead of leaving it in its usual horizontal position, and stood each of the two figures, from the hips down, on a moulded pedestal, thus transforming the ghost and the young woman into caryatids.