Auguste Rodin created The Gates of Hell, the unfinished bronze portal that includes figures later known as The Thinker and The Kiss.
Rodin began The Gates of Hell in 1880 after receiving a commission for a decorative portal for a planned museum of decorative arts in Paris. The project was inspired partly by Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, especially the Inferno. Although the museum was never built, Rodin continued revising the composition for decades.
The portal is crowded with more than 200 figures, including bodies twisting, falling, embracing, and struggling. Rodin developed several independent sculptures from figures first conceived for the doors. The Thinker began as a representation of Dante surveying the scene, while The Kiss evolved from a pair of doomed lovers associated with Dante’s story.
Rodin never completed or cast a final version of the doors during his lifetime. Multiple posthumous bronze casts exist, based on plaster models and later reconstructions. The work therefore differs from a conventional finished monument with one unique original bronze.