Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell is a monumental bronze portal teeming with over 200 tormented, writhing figures. Commissioned in 1880 for a museum that was never built, the chaotic masterpiece became a 37-year obsession that served as a psychological battlefield and an incubator for his most famous standalone sculptures.
The creation and evolution of this terrifying, symbolic monument is defined by a few key elements:
- The Inspiration: Originally conceived as a way to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the project later grew to incorporate the sensual, dark poetry of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal.
- Famous Offshoots: Rather than being a single static piece, it acted as a dynamic workshop of ideas. Rodin ultimately plucked several iconic studies from the doors and cast them as independent artworks, including The Thinker, The Kiss, The Three Shades, and Ugolino.
- The Legacy: Consumed by the sheer volume of shifting forms, Rodin never saw the doors cast in bronze during his lifetime. They were finally cast from his full-size plaster model in the years following his death
Today, you can experience the emotional abyss of the full-scale bronze and plaster casts across a few select locations. The original plaster model resides at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, while several prominent bronze casts are permanently on display at the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and the B. Gerald Cantor Rodin Sculpture Garden at Stanford University.
