The Gates of Hell (1880-about 1900) was Rodin’s most ambitious commission. Originally conceived to be the entrance portal for a never-realized museum of decorative arts in Paris, The Gates features hundreds of figures modeled in high relief and in-the-round. The imagery in The Gates was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and by Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal. (Divine Comedy was written about 1307 and is the tale of a journey through Hell and Purgatory to Paradise and Les Fleurs de Mal, written in 1857, is a book of poetry that examines complex, often morbid emotional states.) The visual model for Rodin’s Gates was the long-standing tradition of compartmentalized scenes on church portals, specifically the doors to the Baptistery in Florence (1425-52) designed by the Italian Renaissance artist Lorenzo Ghiberti. Rodin, however, abandoned the formal structure of these traditional doors, creating instead an environment of tormented souls in which figures float in a surging sea of fire, representing the suffering of mankind.

After The Gates of Hell was almost completed, the commission was cancelled because the French Government decided it needed a train station on the site that had been designated for the decorative arts museum. Accordingly, the Gare d’Orsay was built and Rodin was left with a massive nearly-completed art work, with no one to pay for its casting and no place to put it. (It is ironic that today one of the original plasters for The Gates is in the Musee d’Orsay.)

Thus, beginning in the 1880s, the sculptor removed many of the nearly three-dimensional figures from The Gates of Hell and made them available as independent, freestanding sculptures. Among the most well known are The Thinker (1880) and The Three Shades (1880-1904). The complete Gates of Hell was never cast during Rodin’s lifetime.

The Foundation’s traveling exhibition featured maquettes as well as scores of independent sculptures derived from The Gates of Hell.  Visiting eleven venues, this show was viewed by more than 85,000 people, making it one of the Foundation’s most popular.

Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art 
Pepperdine University, Malibu, California
January 20, 2001 – March 25, 2001

Newcomb Art Gallery  
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
April 12, 2001 – June 15, 2001

Las Vegas Art Museum 
Las Vegas, Nevada
July 12, 2001 – September 16,  2001

Emily Lowe Gallery  
Hofstra University, Hampstead, New York
October 2, 2001 – December 14, 2001

Frederick Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park  
Grand Rapids, Michigan
January 11, 2002 – March 3, 2002

Yellowstone Art Museum 
Billings, Montana
March 23, 2002 – June 2, 2002

Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art  
Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas
June 15, 2002 – August 25, 2002

Ball State University Museum of Art 
Muncie, Indiana
September 15, 2002 – December 11, 2002

Palmer Museum of Art 
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
January 14, 2003 – June 1, 2003

Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery 
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts
June 20, 2003 – August 29, 2003

Saginaw Art Museum 
Saginaw, Michigan
September 20, 2003 – November 30, 2003