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french third republicconcept:era modern

Gates of Hell

Bronze monumental portal (1880–1917) by Auguste Rodin. Commissioned as decorative doors for a projected Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris; never installed in Rodin's lifetime. Contains approximately 180 figures including The Thinker and The Three Shades. The canonical cast is at the Musée Rodin, Paris.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor Rodin's monumental programme with the Gates of Hell, the central work of his career from which The Thinker, The Three Shades, and other celebrated sculptures derived.

Notes

  • ·Commissioned by the French state in 1880 as doors for a projected Museum of Decorative Arts; the museum was never built.
  • ·Inspired by Dante's Inferno and Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise (Florence Baptistery).
  • ·Rodin worked on the commission on and off for 37 years; the plaster was never fully resolved in his lifetime.
  • ·First cast in bronze in 1925–1929, after Rodin's death (1917).
  • ·At least seven authorised bronze casts exist worldwide: Musée Rodin Paris, Kunsthaus Zürich, Rodin Museum Philadelphia, among others.
  • ·The Thinker, Three Shades, Kiss, and Ugolino are among the figures that originated in the Gates and were extracted as independent sculptures.
  • ·The overall programme draws on the inscription above Dante's gate: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'