Category: bay area

Auguste Rodin
France, 1840-1917

The Thinker, large version (Le penseur, grand modele), 1880-81, enlarged 1902-04 Bronze Georges Rudier Foundry, Paris cast 1968

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, promised gift to the Iris & B Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, 1988.106

This sculpture was one of the first figures Rodin conceived for the 1880 commission The Gates of Hell. It began as a symbolic depiction of the Italian author Dante Alighieri, whose 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy in part inspired Rodin’s vision. Rodin positioned him on top of the monument, looking down on the souls suffering in Hell. Over time, Dante evolved into The Thinker, a freestanding work honoring the power of the human intellect. Rodin enlarged it to this size after 1920, creating the sculpture that endures as one of the world’s most recognized works of modern art.

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