On August 16, 1880, Rodin received a commission to create a pair of bronze doors for the entryway of a new decorative arts museum in Paris. The source for the project was the Inferno (Italian for “hell”), the first part of Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s three-part epic poem The Divine Comedy that explores the author’s fictional journey from Hell to Purgatory to Paradise (completed in 1321).
Although plans for the museum were cancelled after three years, Rodin continued to work on the doors, called The Gates of Hell, for the rest of his life. It became a creative outlet and a source of experimentation. He eventually discarded the idea of a strict narrative and created a chaotic world filled with more than 200 figures that are radically expressive in their poses and gestures. Some of his most famous works like The Thinker (meant to be Dante) and The Kiss were originally conceived as part of The Gates and were only later removed, enlarged, and cast as independent works.
In Rodin’s lifetime, The Gates of Hell was never cast in bronze and known only in a full-size plaster model kept at the artist’s studio outside Paris.
