Two new Rodin sculptures at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Baroness Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza has just granted the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum the long-term loan of two sculptures by Auguste Rodin from her private collection: The Death of Alcestes (c.1889) and A Young Woman Trusting the his secret in Isis (1906) ). Both can be seen in the Rodin room, on the first floor of the museum, and join the other four marbles by the French author that are part of the Carmen Thyssen Collection, exhibited on the ground floor. All of them were commissioned from the artist himself by August Thyssen (1842-1926), grandfather of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, becoming the starting point of the family's art collecting.

Shortly after acquiring Schloss Landsberg in 1903, the German businessman August Thyssen decided to commission the sculptor Auguste Rodin for a set of seven sculptures to be installed in the so-called "winter garden" of the castle, establishing from then on a close correspondence with the French artist. The installation in the museum's so-called Rodin Room somewhat recreates this original location for which the sculptures were made.

Except for one, which ended up in the hands of another branch of the family, this set of sculptures was successively inherited by August Thyssen's son Heinrich (1875-1947) and by his grandson Hans Heinrich (1921 -2002), the true creators of the collection we know today and which is mostly housed in the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.