The three figures, of the same dimensions, evoke the damned who meet Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy, a founding text of Italian literature. The Shades embody the poet's famous phrase: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".
The man's strange attitude and unlikely stance suggest a broken, crushed being. The muscles are prominent, the hands and feet disproportionately large. Michelangelo's influence is obvious in the purity of the neckline, which continues through the shoulder and into the arm. Rodin is not striving for anatomical correctness but rather evocative power, suggestive of pain, despair and affliction. Despondency drags the whole mass of the body downwards. The eye slips over the man's body to the floor, where all the lines converge.
Rodin worked on this project until the end of his life. More than 180 bronze figures ranging from very flat relief to sculpture in the round (sculpture it is possible to walk around) were intended to take their place in the gigantic Gates of Hell, which stand more than six metres tall. Despite the artist's creative genius and ambition, he could not see the object of this obsession through to the end.
Other sculptures by Rodin are on display upstairs in the museum, in the painting rooms.
Long-term loan from the Musée Rodin, Paris.
Ref. D 996.1.1
The three figures, of the same dimensions, evoke the damned who meet Dante and Virgil in The Divine Comedy, a founding text of Italian literature. The Shades embody the poet's famous phrase: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here".
The man's strange attitude and unlikely stance suggest a broken, crushed being. The muscles are prominent, the hands and feet disproportionately large. Michelangelo's influence is obvious in the purity of the neckline, which continues through the shoulder and into the arm. Rodin is not striving for anatomical correctness but rather evocative power, suggestive of pain, despair and affliction. Despondency drags the whole mass of the body downwards. The eye slips over the man's body to the floor, where all the lines converge.
Rodin worked on this project until the end of his life. More than 180 bronze figures ranging from very flat relief to sculpture in the round (sculpture it is possible to walk around) were intended to take their place in the gigantic Gates of Hell, which stand more than six metres tall. Despite the artist's creative genius and ambition, he could not see the object of this obsession through to the end.
Other sculptures by Rodin are on display upstairs in the museum, in the painting rooms.
Long-term loan from the Musée Rodin, Paris.
Ref. D 996.1.1
