Porte de l'Enfer
In the nineteenth century, the old audit office stood on the site of the Orsay railway station. After its destruction by fire in 1871, during the Commune, there were plans to replace it with a museum of the decorative arts. In 1888, the State commissioned Rodin to design monumental doors for the entrance to the museum. They were to be decorated with eleven low reliefs representing Dante's Divine Comedy. Rodin took his inspiration from the famous doors that Ghiberti had made for the baptistery in Florence in the fifteenth century.
Three years later, he was satisfied with his initial model, but the plans for the museum were abandoned. The discarded doors became a creative reservoir for Rodin, providing many groups of figures which were finally detached from the whole, such as The Thinker and The Kiss. The Gates of Hell, which only a few privileged critics had been allowed to see, then took on symbolic value: of Rodin's boundless creative genius for some, of his inability to finish anything, for others. It was not exhibited until the Great Exhibition of 1900 and even then in an unfinished state.
At the top, the group of the three Shades is, in fact, in an extremely modern approach, the triple repetition of the same figure with one arm missing. On the pier, The Thinker (Dante himself) is on the brink of the abyss. On the right-hand panel we can see Ugolino. On the left, Paolo and Francesca are among the tumbling bodies. Everything emerges from seething lava. The convulsed attitudes convey despair, grief and malediction. The forms invade the structure to the extent of sometimes replacing the architectural elements.
A symbolist work by excellence, leaving the imagination free to roam, the high relief releases the vehemence and expressive power of the human body in an indeterminate space, destabilised by the play of light and shade. The plaster model in the Musée d'Orsay dates from 1917. The Gates of Hell finally stand on the site for which they were commissioned although of course they do not function as doors.
- 1880, acquis après commande plâtre commandé par Jules Ferry pour le musée des Arts décoratifs (à construire) (8000 F)) (arrêté du 16/08/1880)
- augmentations le 31 octobre 1881 (10000 F) ; le 8 août 1884 (7000 F) ; le 17 mars 1888 (5000 F) (total 30000 F)
- huit acomptes furent versés de 1880 à 1888
- 1917, le solde fut payé après "achèvement" de Léonce Bénédite et Paul Cruet (épreuves tirées d'anciens moules) le 26 juillet 1917
- inventorié pour ordre, n° 2884 "livré directement à l'hôtel Biron"
- à la chapelle de l'hôtel Biron, Paris (S 2450)
- attribué au musée Rodin
- 1977-1986, confiée à la fonderie de Coubertin à Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse pour servir de modèle à la reprise de l'édition en bronze
- 1986, dépôt au musée d'Orsay (arrêté du 27 février 1986) (DO 1986 4) (entrée au musée d'Orsay le 6 mars 1986) (arrêté renouvelé le 4 décembre 1991)
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Bénédite, Léonce, Catalogue sommaire des oeuvres d'Auguste Rodin et autres oeuvres d'art de la donation Rodin, Paris, Frazier-Soye, 1919, n° 256
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Lami, Stanislas, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'Ecole française au XIXe siècle. T. IV. N-Z, Paris, E. Champion, 1921, p. 166
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Grappe, Georges, Catalogue du musée Rodin, Paris, [s.n.], 1929, n° 47 (bronze)
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Grappe, Georges, Catalogue du musée Rodin, Paris, [s.n.], 1944, n° 54
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Elsen, Albert Edward, The Gates of Hell, Stanford, Standford University Press, 1985
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Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette, Rodin, La Porte de l'Enfer, Paris, Musée Rodin, 1999
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Pingeot, Anne, 48/14 La revue du Musée d'Orsay, "Rodin au musée du Luxembourg", Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 2000, p. 64-77 reprod.
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(dir.) Cogeval, Guy, Le Musée d'Orsay à 360 degrés, Paris, Skira ; Flammarion ; Musée d'Orsay, 2013, p. 161, texte de Catherine Chevillot
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Pingeot, Anne ; Le Normand-Romain, Antoinette ; Margerie, Laure de, Musée d'Orsay. Catalogue sommaire illustré des sculptures, Paris, Réunion des musées nationaux, 1986, p.239
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