Gates of Hell

Detail, right door panel writhing figures form crest of a wave of the drapery form; In August 1880, the Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Arts, Edmond Turquet (1836-1914), invited Rodin to provide monumental bronze doors for a planned new museum of decorative arts. It appears that it was Rodin’s decision to choose Dante’s Inferno as the theme for the doors that became known as the Gates of Hell. In 1885 Rodin announced that the Gates would be ready to be cast in six months. Plans for building the museum were soon canceled, however. Freed from a deadline, he let the plaster work stand in his studio, intermittently revising the figure groups and architectural mouldings. Not until 1917 did Léonce Bénédite, the Musée Rodin’s first curator, manage to persuade the sculptor to allow him to reconstruct his masterpiece in order to have it cast in bronze. Rodin died before seeing the result of all these long years of effort. The first bronze was made in 1925; there are a total of six bronzes. The original plaster in the Musée d’Orsay remains the property of the French government. This cast made by Fonderie Alexis Rudier in 1928 for the Musée Rodin. Source: Musée Rodin [website]; http://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/ (accessed 5/12/2014