The Prayer 1910, Musée Rodin cast no. 5 in 1979 Bronze 49 ½  x  21 5/8 x 19 5/8 in. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation Rodin's partial figures were often criticized by the public. Many critics believed that the human body should be shown in its complete form; anything less was seen as not only incomplete but as a mutilation of the body. Critics also cited Rodin's partial figures as further evidence of his inability to complete public commissions (as with the never-realized monuments to Balzac and Victor Hugo). Rodin never apologized for his work. He was quoted as saying, "Beauty is like God; a fragment of beauty is beauty complete." The female partial figure of The Prayer resembles works of antiquity with its smooth surface and idealistic proportions. It has been speculated that The Prayer derived from a study for The Gates of Hell but was not incorporated into the final monument.