How Surgeons Are Learning From The Hands Rodin Sculpted
Study for Pierre de Weissant (detail), 1885 Corresponds with medical condition: Apert Hand Bronze, cast 1971. 27 ½ x 11 x 11 in. Gift of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, 1974.98 Auguste Rodin, the French sculptor, spent a lot of time observing the human anatomy, which helped him to convey emotions in his artwork. “Every part of the human figure is expressive,” he said. A hundred years later, Dr. James Chang, an internationally renowned hand reconstruction surgeon at Stanford, has been using the hands Rodin sculpted to teach medical students to identify particular hand conditions. For example, the constricted left hand of Pierre de Weissant, in Rodin's Second Maquette for the Burghers of Calais, resembles the hand of a patient with Apert syndrome, a rare genetic disorder in...