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THE GATES OF HELL Antoinette Le Normand-Romain

Not far from The Thinker stands Rodin's monumental masterpiece, The Gates of Hell, installed in the garden of the Museum in 1937. By a decree of 16 August 1880, Rodin received a commission from the Directorate of Fine Arts for a monumental door which was to be decorated with low reliefs inspired by The Divine Comedy of Dante. This door was intended for the planned Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to be built on the site of the Cour des Comptes, demolished in 1871 (this site is now occupied by the Musée d'Orsay). The subject was probably suggested by Rodin for it is known that he admired Dante and used to keep a copy of his book in his pocket. He started to work feverishly in a studio specially allocated to him for the purpose at the Dépôt des Marbres in Rue de l'Université. His initial idea was a composition in panels similar to the Door of Paradise in the Baptistery of Florence by Ghiberti (1425-1452). However, he soon changed his mind about dividing the door into sections, preferring the example of Michelangelo's Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. The third maquette (exhibited in room 10) shows that already in 1880 its composition was close to the one finally adopted.
He ignored two thirds of the poem by Dante to concentrate on its darkest side, the part about Hell. The first year was primarily devoted to sketches which followed the text of the poem closely, but once he started modelling, he only retained a few identifiable characters, such as Paolo and Francesca, Ugolino and his Children, The Shades, and The Thinker, a portrayal of Dante himself, among a host of figures in different sizes. These figures or groups invade the traditional underlying structure, sometimes replacing the architectural components, and were made independently of one another. They were tried out on a wooden frame in 1882, then set aside.

Jessie Lipscomb Rodin in front of The Gates of Hells, reflected in a mirror 1887 albumen print 12,9 x 11,1cm Ph.1442

By 1884, Rodin felt confident enough about his project to make an estimate for the bronze casting, which was ordered on 20 August 1885. Although the model, probably mounted at the end of 1885 or beginning of 1886, did not satisfy him, a few privileged people were allowed to see it. Among them were Félicien Rops, Edmond de Goncourt and, in particular, Félicien Champsaur who wrote a description in Le Figaro of 16 January 1886, the first based on a viewing of the plaster. On this date, The Shades were in place and the Paolo and Francesca group (later to be called The Kiss) was still set in the centre of the left wing. However, the Paolo and Francesca group was removed shortly afterwards for Rodin realized that the state of pure happiness this sculpture portrayed did not really fit in with the rest of the composition. The following stage is known through photographs sent to Rodin in September 1887 by a young English woman, Jessie Lipscomb. Ugolino and the new Paolo and Francesca, closer to the spirit of Dante's text, replaced The Kiss, but the tympanum and leaves still show quite a few differences compared to the final version.
Rodin was expected to present The Gates of Hell at the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Even though he could not make up his mind, he allowed a greater number of visitors to see the work, including Claude Monet who was "amazed" by what he discovered in the studio, Edmond Bazire, Léon Lequime and Georges Rodenbach. By about 1890, The Gates of Hell probably resembled the work as we know it today. After this date, Rodin was too busy working on a number of other important commissions (The Kiss, 1888; the Monument to Victor Hugo, 1889; the Monument to Balzac, 1891, ...) to be able to devote much time to it.
In fact, it is hardly mentioned at all after 1889, and it is only in 1900 that the general public had the surprise of discovering The Gates of Hell stripped of its figures, not in the context of the Universal Exhibition but at a personal exhibition organized by Rodin in Place de l'Alma in Paris. In twenty years, Rodin's concept of the relief had changed drastically for he now considered the contrast between the hollows and projections to be excessive. But even more important, he had taken the habit of stripping away from his works any detail he felt was superfluous, and just as he had done in the case of the armless Inner Voice, he decided to remove from his Gate all the attributes which contributed to its immediate understanding.

Eugène Druet The Gates of Hell gelatin silver print 40 x 30 cm Ph. 396

After the exhibition ended, the Gate was taken to Rue de l'Université, and then to Meudon. Rodin wished to have it near him all the time even though by now it was obvious he would never finish it. "It barely needed one month to put everything in place. But Rodin could not devote this one month to his Gate, and it will very probably remain unfinished", noted Gustave Coquiot, one of his secretaries in Le Vrai Rodin (1913).
However, very accurate reference marks were made when the monument was dismantled in 1899-1900. These marks enabled Léonce Bénédite, the future curator of the Rodin Museum, to reconstitute a complete model at the beginning of 1917 (deposited at the Musée d'Orsay). A second model was used to cast the first three bronze versions of The Gates of Hell (Philadephia, Paris and Tokyo), while the plaster in Meudon, the most authentic since it was the one Rodin constantly had under his eyes, was taken away and restored in July-August of 1917.
The Gates of Hell, the first major commission received by Rodin, even though it was never delivered, can be looked upon as a summary of his entire life. It accompanied him through all the years of his career as a sculptor, and reflects his main centres of interest, his admiration for Gothic and Italian Renaissance art, for Dante and Baudelaire. Above all, it is a supreme demonstration of the expressive powers he gave to the human body. Rodin had in fact modelled bodies by the hundreds for the Gate, and very soon some of them became works in their own right. In 1881, 1883 and 1886, he exhibited fragments under different titles. In Brussels in 1887, he exhibited The Kiss which he had removed from the Gate, as well as Ugolino, and in Copenhagen in 1888, he presented The Thinker under the title The Poet. But it was in 1889, at the Monet-Rodin exhibition held at the Galerie Georges Petit, that a wider public was able to fully appreciate his work. Visitors were amazed by "the extremely modern realism of these small figures vibrating with life which he modestly referred to as studies, but which were actually in the process of revolutionizing contemporary sculpture despite their small dimensions" (Arsène Alexandre, in Paris, 21 June 1889). They could not recognize the familiar anecdotes or poses they were accustomed to seeing in the works displayed at official Salons. Thus, deprived of clothes and decor, Paolo and Francesca were no longer identifiable, and the suggestion to call the group The Kiss came from the public. Rodin made the body itself significant; he expressed it with "bones, muscles and nerves", and with a group like Ugolino who, gnawed by hunger, crawls over the corpses of his children, he carried to its extreme the search for expression by Romantics, from Préault to the young Carpeaux. The period of intense creation around The Gates of Hell permitted him later to have a vast number of figures at his disposal to serve as a starting point for new compositions. But it was also during this period, between 1880 and 1885, that his work revealed techniques which were to become an integral part of his way of sculpting. With The Three Shades, Je Suis Belle and The Thinker, he emphasized the function of fragments, assemblage and multiplication, and then enlargement.
Rooms 10 and 11 of the Museum display figures originating from The Gates of Hell in the form of independent works (The Thinker, Sorrow, Ugolino, Je Suis Belle, ...) or as studies or fragments for the Gate (the plasters in the large showcase in room 10), while the enlargements of these same figures, made from 1894 onwards, decorate the garden outside. Even though The Martyr, The Prodigal Son and The Crouching Woman are on display on the first floor of the Museum, the large-scale statue of The Thinker can be seen in the garden in front of the northern facade, while Cybèle, the Caryatid Carrying a Stone and the Caryatid with Urn stand in front of the southern facade. In their original size, the latter is a slightly later variation of the first one which was exhibited in 1886 at the Galerie Georges Petit, before being placed around 1889-1890 on top of the left hand pilaster of The Gate. Although the caryatid has retained its architectural function in this particular context, as an independent work the figure seems to incarnate misfortune, crushed as she is by the weight of the stone on her shoulder. The two caryatids were so successful that they were made in different materials. The big Caryatid Carrying a Stone was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1909.

Jacques-Ernest Bulloz Caryatid Carrying a Stone carbon print 35,5 x 26,1 cm Ph.3485