The Gates of Hell

Lore & Background

The sculpture was commissioned by the Directorate of Fine Arts in 1880. Rodin worked on and off on this project for thirty-seven years, continuously adding, removing, or altering over two hundred human figures on the doors, until his death in 1917. The Directorate asked for an inviting entrance to a planned Decorative Arts Museum with the theme being left to Rodin's selection. Even before this commission, Rodin had developed sketches of some of Dante's characters based on his admiration of Dante's Inferno. The Decorative Arts Museum was never built. Rodin worked on this project on the ground floor of the Hôtel Biron. Near the end of his life, Rodin donated sculptures, drawings and reproduction rights to the French government. In 1919, two years after his death, the Hôtel Biron became the Musée Rodin, housing a cast of The Gates of Hell and related works.

Rodin conceived that people would walk toward the work, perhaps up a flight of stairs, and be overwhelmed frontally by the massive gates, contemplating the experience of hell that Dante describes in his Inferno. Rodin thought particularly of Dante's warning over the entrance of the Inferno, 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.' A work of the scope of The Gates of Hell had not been attempted before, but inspiration came from Lorenzo Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise at the Baptistery of St. John, Florence, 15th century bronze doors depicting figures from the Old Testament. Another source of inspiration was medieval cathedrals combining high and low relief. Rodin was also inspired by Michelangelo's fresco The Last Judgment, Delacroix's painting The Barque of Dante, Balzac's collection La Comédie humaine and Baudelaire's poems Les Fleurs du mal.

Reader's Guide

The Gates of Hell represents a pivotal achievement in late 19th-century sculpture, combining literary inspiration with innovative composition. Rodin's thirty-seven-year engagement with the project allowed him to develop numerous figures that later became independent works, such as The Thinker, The Kiss, and Ugolino and His Children. The work's unfinished state at Rodin's death and the museum's cancellation contributed to its mythic status. Its influence extends through its many casts distributed globally, including at the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo. The sculpture's integration of high and low relief, its psychological depth drawn from Dante, and its sheer scale challenged traditional door design. Rodin's method of working from nature with models, as he described in an interview, grounded the fantastical infernal scenes in human reality. The work remains a touchstone for understanding Rodin's artistic process and his ability to synthesize literary, artistic, and personal visions into a cohesive monumental form.

Did You Know?

• Rodin worked on The Gates of Hell for thirty-seven years, until his death in 1917.
• The original plaster model is displayed at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
• Several figures from the gates, such as The Thinker and The Kiss, were later cast as independent free-standing statues.
• The Decorative Arts Museum for which the gates were commissioned was never built.