Which large unfinished project contains Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker?

Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker was created for The Gates of Hell.

The Gates of Hell was a monumental pair of doors commissioned in 1880 for a planned museum of decorative arts in Paris. The building was never completed, but Rodin continued developing the doors for decades. Their surface became a crowded world of figures inspired partly by Dante’s Divine Comedy and by themes of human desire, suffering, and judgment.

The Thinker originally appeared above the doors, where it was associated with Dante contemplating the scenes below. Rodin later enlarged the figure and exhibited it as an independent sculpture. The freestanding version became one of his most famous works.

Because The Thinker is often seen alone, readers sometimes miss its origin as part of a much larger composition. The Gates of Hell also provided figures and ideas later adapted into works such as The Kiss and The Three Shades.