Good morning.

Today, a pair of doors that led nowhere… and the small figure above them who climbed down to become the most famous thinker in the world.

Let’s begin.

The Thinker Was Never Meant to Think Alone

Auguste Rodin—The Thinker

His name is Auguste Rodin. As a young man, he had been turned down three times by the École des Beaux-Arts, France’s official art school. For years he earned his living carving ornaments for other people’s buildings.

Now, at last, he had a chance to make something enormous.

Rodin chose his subject from his favourite book, the Inferno of the Italian poet Dante. In it, Dante travels down through the circles of Hell, meeting sinners and their punishments. Rodin decided to fill his doors with them… falling, twisting, embracing, despairing.

He had an older model in mind, too: the gilded bronze doors that Lorenzo Ghiberti made for the Baptistery in Florence in the 15th century, known as the Gates of Paradise. Rodin would make the Gates of Hell.

And above the doorway, looking down on it all, he placed the poet himself. A naked, muscular man sits with his chin on his hand, contemplating the world he has imagined. Rodin called him The Poet.

There was only one problem. The museum was never built. Rodin kept working on the doors anyway, on and off, for the rest of his life. This is how they look today.

Auguste Rodin, “The Gates of Hell,” modelled 1880–1917, cast 1926–28. Rodin Museum, Philadelphia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Stand back first. The doors are more than six metres high, and they seethe with bodies, more than 180 of them, climbing, clinging and tumbling into the dark.

Now look up. At the very top, three identical men lean their heads together, pointing down. And just below them sits the poet, small and still, the one calm figure in the storm.

Rodin never called the doors finished, and they were never cast in bronze during his lifetime. They existed only as a vast plaster model in his studio at Meudon, outside Paris, which is now in the Musée d’Orsay.

The first bronze casts came after his death. In 1925, Jules Mastbaum, an American cinema owner who was building a Rodin museum in Philadelphia, ordered two sets of the doors: one for his own museum and one for the Musée Rodin in Paris.

Detail of “The Gates of Hell,” Rodin Museum, Philadelphia. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

But the doors had already given birth to something else. Rodin kept taking figures off the doors and turning them into works of their own. A pair of lovers from Dante’s poem became The Kiss.

And the poet on the lintel became The Thinker. Rodin first showed him on his own in 1888, then had him enlarged to more than life size. In 1904 the giant version was shown in Paris to great acclaim.

Admirers then raised money by public subscription, and in 1906 the bronze was installed in front of the Panthéon, where France buries its great men. In 1922, it moved to the garden of the Musée Rodin, where it sits today.

Auguste Rodin, “The Thinker,” monumental bronze cast 1904. Musée Rodin, Paris. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

In other words, the most famous image of thought in the world was never meant to stand alone. He was a poet looking down at Hell, and we took him away from it.

Separated from Dante, he became anyone at all… a philosopher, a worker, a student before an exam. That openness is why the statue has been copied, parodied and cast again and again, and why Rodin himself rests beneath one at his grave in Meudon.

The first time I sat on a bench in the Musée Rodin’s garden, I tried the pose. It is surprisingly uncomfortable. His right elbow rests on his left knee, which twists the whole body. The calm you see is actually tension, held very still.

For more, the Musée Rodin’s own page on the statue traces his journey from the doors to the Panthéon: The Thinker, Musée Rodin →

The doors to Hell were never finished, and the museum was never built. But the poet climbed down from the lintel… and has been thinking for all of us ever since.

Three Things Worth Knowing

Curious & Controversial

Connoisseur’s Diary

Worth Seeing This Week

At the Musée Rodin in Paris, you can see the Thinker and a bronze cast of The Gates of Hell within the same garden, so the poet and his doors are reunited, at least in sight of each other.

Where: Musée Rodin, 77 rue de Varenne, 75007 Paris. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 a.m.–6.30 p.m.; last entry 5.45 p.m. Closed Mondays.  Tickets: €14 full price, which includes the sculpture garden; free for under-18s.  Insider tip: Visitor guides note that entry is free on the first Sunday of the month from October to March, so the next free day is Sunday 6 December. Come early: the first hour is the calmest.  Plan your visit at musee-rodin.fr →

Worth Reading

Rodin: The Shape of Genius — Ruth Butler (1993). The great modern biography, following Rodin from his rejections at art school to world fame, with the long story of the Gates at its heart.

Explore Further

Read: The Gates of Hell →, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia on the first bronze cast of the doors.

Tonight’s Quiz

1. What was The Thinker originally called?

A) The Philosopher

B) The Poet

C) The Dreamer

D) The Judge

2. Why were the Gates of Hell never delivered?

A) Rodin was fired

B) The museum they were made for was never built

C) The bronze was stolen

D) The state ran out of bronze

3. Which pair of lovers from the Inferno became Rodin’s Kiss?

A) Romeo and Juliet

B) Paolo and Francesca

C) Tristan and Isolde

D) Dante and Beatrice

If the links above don’t respond in your email app, just reply with your answers—I’ll write back.

Rodin failed to get into art school three times, and his greatest commission led to a museum that never existed. Out of those doors came a figure almost everyone recognises. Some failures are only half-finished successes.

Tomorrow, an opera booed off the stage at La Scala in 1904… that became one of the most performed in the world.

Until tomorrow,
Charles T. Mayfair

Editor, Connoisseur Daily