Detail of the tympanum of Rodin’s The Gates of Hell at the Musée Rodin, Paris

The Gates of Hell by Rodin: The Sculpture He Worked On for 37 Years

Rodin was commissioned to make a door in 1880 for a museum that was never built. He reworked it until he died, crowded it with over 200 figures, and never saw it cast in bronze.

Visit

The bronze stands outdoors in the garden, included with museum entry. Musée Rodin Tickets

Location

Musée Rodin garden, 77 Rue de Varenne, Paris 7th.

Visit duration

About 1.5 to 2 hours for the galleries and the garden. Plan your visit

Material and size

Bronze, about 6 metres tall and 4 wide, carrying more than 200 figures.

Rodin’s Gates of Hell, and the Museum That Never Opened

In 1880 the French state asked Auguste Rodin for a decorative door. It was meant for a new museum of decorative arts on the Left Bank, on the ground where the Musée d’Orsay stands today, and the museum was never built. Rodin kept the commission anyway and kept working: he was still moving figures around thirty-seven years later, when he died. He took his subject from Dante’s Inferno, and what he produced is less a door than a wall of bodies falling. To see how the rest of his work fits around it, start with Rodin’s sculptures and the garden at the Musée Rodin.

The Figures on Rodin’s Gates of Hell

The Gates of Hell by Rodin in the garden of the Musée Rodin, Paris — Photo: Shadowgate, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

There are more than 200 figures on the doors, and almost none of them stand still. They fall, twist, cling to each other and slide down the panels, and the surface has no frame or order to hold them, which is exactly what made the piece so strange to visitors expecting a decorative door.

Rodin did not compose it once and finish it. He modelled figures separately, kept a stock of them in the studio and moved them around the doors for decades, enlarging the ones that worked. That habit is why so much of the museum traces back here: several of the single sculptures visitors come to see started as small figures on this surface, and were later cast and shown entirely on their own.

The Bronze Rodin Never Saw

The Three Shades at the top of Rodin’s The Gates of Hell, Musée Rodin, Paris — Photo: couscouschocolat, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The doors were commissioned in bronze, and no bronze was cast while Rodin was alive. He worked in plaster, and around 1900 he stripped many of the figures off to show a bare version at his own exhibition in Paris, then put them back. What visitors see in the garden is a cast made after his death, from the plaster he left behind.

Look at the top and three identical men lean inward over the doorway, one figure repeated three times from different angles. They are The Three Shades, and in Dante they point down at the inscription over the entrance to hell.

How to Read the Gates of Hell Sculpture

The Three Shades

Three identical figures at the very top, leaning in over the door with their arms dropped. Rodin made one man and used him three times, turned to a different angle each time.

The Tympanum

The panel above the doors, where a seated man looks down over everything happening below him. He is the reason most people already know this sculpture without knowing where he came from.

The Ugolino detail on Rodin’s Gates of Hell — Photo: LPLT, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ugolino and His Sons

Count Ugolino crawls over his own dying children, one of the darkest passages in the Inferno. Rodin later enlarged the group into a sculpture of its own.

Rodin’s The Gates of Hell in the Musée Rodin garden — Photo: Shadowgate, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Whole Surface

Step back and the doors stop reading as scenes and start reading as one movement, everything sliding downward. Rodin worked the whole surface as a single fall rather than a set of panels.

Seeing the Doors in the Garden

The bronze is outdoors, at the far end of the garden, and it rewards more time than most people give it. Stand close first and pick out single figures, then walk back twenty paces and let the whole surface move. Low side light in the morning or late afternoon brings out far more of the relief than flat midday sun.

Musée Rodin: special tickets

Highlights

Avoid long entry lines for the museum.

Discover Rodin’s most celebrated creations like The Thinker and The Kiss.

Explore both the permanent displays and special temporary exhibits.

Stroll through the serene Sculpture Garden inside a historic 18th-century mansion.

Benefit from optional add-ons such as audio guides and interactive tablets at checkout.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Gates of Hell

Who made The Gates of Hell?

Auguste Rodin, who was commissioned in 1880 and worked on the piece for the rest of his life, until his death in 1917.

What was The Gates of Hell made for?

A museum of decorative arts planned for the Left Bank in Paris. The museum was never built, and the site is now occupied by the Musée d’Orsay.

What story is it based on?

Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy. Rodin also drew on Baudelaire, whose poems he had illustrated a few years earlier.

How many figures are on The Gates of Hell?

More than 200, ranging from a few centimetres to near life size, spread across the doors, the frame and the panel above them.

How big is it?

Roughly 6 metres tall, 4 metres wide and 1 metre deep, which is why it needs the open end of the garden rather than a gallery.

Did Rodin ever finish it?

No. He reworked it for thirty-seven years, took figures off around 1900 for an exhibition and put them back, and never had it cast in bronze in his lifetime.

Where can you see The Gates of Hell?

A bronze stands in the garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris. Other casts were made after his death and are now in Philadelphia, Zurich, Tokyo and elsewhere.

Why do other Rodin sculptures look familiar on it?

Because they started here. Rodin modelled figures for the doors, then enlarged and cast the ones that worked as independent pieces, which is how several of his best-known works came about.