You can't get around the fact that Rodin could really stack that clay. Claudel gets a lot of credit for pieces from this period (rightly so, I guess, though I'm no Rodin historian), but there's something both torque'ed and peaceful about this piece. The hips and belly relationship to the legs is totally strange and something you'd only get if you were forcing the model into the most unnatural of poses. But that's how he physically represents the twisted nature of her soul (this helmet maker's beautiful wife).

DO you know the story of the helmet maker's beautiful wife? It would be very at home in any of the old blues numbers complaining about a no account wife runnin' 'round with every man in town....

Done in brush pen--one good, and one worn-out to dry-brushiness for the tonal stuff.