Why did The Age of Bronze cause controversy when it was exhibited?

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Portrait of Auguste Rodin standing indoors, wearing a buttoned, two-toned coat with a full beard and tousled hair, looking slightly to the side. — Auguste Rodin French sculptor Auguste Rodin.

When The Age of Bronze was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1877, it sparked a significant scandal in artistic circles. The work's extreme realism contrasted so sharply with the statues produced by Rodin’s contemporaries that critics accused him of having formed the mold directly upon a living person rather than sculpting it by hand.1