Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of a seated man supporting his chin was originally titled The Poet and is now known as The Thinker.
Rodin conceived the figure around 1880 as part of The Gates of Hell, a monumental project inspired partly by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The seated figure was intended to represent Dante contemplating the underworld and the people in his poem.
The original plaster figure was approximately 71 centimetres high. Rodin later enlarged it, and numerous casts exist in museums and public collections around the world. The best-known monumental bronze was cast in 1904 and is associated with the Musée Rodin in Paris.
The pose is often treated as a universal image of intellectual concentration, but its original meaning was tied to Dante and The Gates of Hell. The sculpture is not a portrait of Dante, although its literary association helped shape its first title.