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The "Gates of Hell"
were created by the famous French sculpture Auguste Rodin
(November 12, 1840 – November 17, 1917) who accepted a
commission from the Directorate of Fine Arts
to make an impressive door for the Museum of Decorative Arts
in Paris that they were planning to built. His inspiration
for the theme of the door came from Dante
Alighieri's "The Inferno" from his epic poem "La Divina Commedia" or
"The Divine Comedy",
and from Lorenzo Ghiberti's bronze "Gates
of Paradise".
"Abandon all hope, you who enter here"
This masterful work
became for him a never ending source for
numerous sculptures turning famous independently of the original
project. Like most talented artists he was insecure whether he
had achieved to successfully transfer his vision into his
sculpting and at several stages while the work still in progress
he would invite friends to show them the project and carefully
listen to their comments. He developed the habit of removing
pieces from their location and casting enlarged versions which
were immediately embraced by the critics and the public for
their enormous depth and beauty as illustrated separately in
The Thinker (showing a man in sober meditation battling a
formidable internal struggle) and The Kiss (depicting the
tragic and passionate love of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo
Malatesta from Dante's "The Divine Comedy") and then he would rearrange
the composition or place them back at their original location.
Dimensions of the Gates of Hell
- The Gates of Hell stand at 6 meters high (19' 44")
- They are 4 meters wide (13' 16") T
- They are 1 meter deep (3' 29") T
- They contain 180 figures
- The figures range from 15 centimeters high up to more than one meter.
- Several of the figures were also cast independently by Rodin.
It is possible that
not many people know the "Gates of Hell" were inspired by
Dante's "Divine Comedy" or that its central characters were used
as main figures in the composition of the "Gates of Hell" or
that "The Thinker" was initially called "The Poet", is
located above the door panels and that there is an interpretation
that suggests it might represent Dante looking down to the
characters in his Inferno but also there is another interpretation
which suggests that the Thinker is Rodin himself meditating
about his composition!
It sounds
confusing but is not and is really very simple: Rodin was
fascinated by Dante's "Divine Comedy" and upon reading the
epic poem had even drawn sketches of the main characters. Then
in 1880 the Directorate of Fine Arts commissioned him to make an
impressive door for the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris that
they were planning to built (and was never built!). The
agreement was that Rodin will deliver the doors in 1885 (he
worked on them on and of for 37 years and were not finished
until his death in 1917) and that he would have complete
artistic freedom in choosing the theme for the doors. Well, as I
mentioned above, being a Dante admirer for many years and having
already drawn sketches of the poet's main characters, Rodin decided
to use as his theme Dante's Inferno hence begun the birth of the "Gates of Hell".
Never before had
work of such colossal scale being attempted. Inspiration came to
him from medieval cathedrals that he had studied in the past and
especially the bronze doors of "Gates of Paradise"
that in 10 panels depict Biblical scenes
and figures from the Old Testament and were created by
the 15th century Italian Renaissance sculpture Lorenzo Ghiberti
for the East Entrance of the Baptistery of St. John in Florence
Italy and took Ghiberti 21 years to finish his masterpiece.
Rodin worked on his project on the ground floor of the
Hôtel
Biron that in
1919, (two years after his death), became the
Rodin Museum and houses a cast of The Gates of Hell and other
related works that upon his death he had donated along with
reproduction rights to the French Government.
"Fugit
Amor" (above), is detail from the left panel of the Gates of
Hell depicting the doomed lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo
Malatesta
Detail from the right panel of the Gates of Hell depicting
"Ugolino and his sons" and directly below "Paolo and
Francesca" as he tries to hold on to Francesca who slips
away.
Detail of Gates of Hell
I
have put 2 red circles indicating location of the above
mentioned groups.
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