Which Rodin sculpture stands above The Gates of Hell?

The Three Shades stands above Auguste Rodin’s The Gates of Hell.

The group consists of three nearly identical male figures arranged around a central point, with their arms extended in the same direction. Their gesture traditionally relates to the warning associated with Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” The figures therefore act as a dramatic sign above the imagined entrance.

Rodin designed The Gates of Hell as a monumental pair of doors for a proposed Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. The building was never completed, but the doors became one of his central lifelong projects. He repeatedly altered and reinterpreted elements from the composition.

The Three Shades is easy to confuse with The Thinker because both works are associated with the doors. The Thinker occupies the upper tympanum, while The Three Shades form the crowning group above the doorway. Their repeated bodies create a deliberately unsettling, almost architectural rhythm.