Florentine poet whose Divine Comedy supplied the first subject of The Gates of Hell and the original identity of Rodin's Thinker as The Poet.
Sculpture · Modern sculpture
Auguste Rodin conceived this tense seated figure in 1880 as Dante above The Gates of Hell. He later exhibited it alone, renamed it The Thinker, and enlarged it into the monumental form now in the Musée Rodin garden.
Sculpture · Modern sculpture
Auguste Rodin began this monumental doorway in 1880 for a Paris museum that was never built. Its crowded vision of Dante's Hell became the source of more than 200 figures and groups, including The Thinker, The Three Shades, and Ugolino and His Children.
Depicted in · 1880
Rodin first titled the figure The Poet and conceived it as Dante Alighieri leaning over The Gates of Hell. As he exhibited it independently, the title and meaning broadened into The Thinker.
Depicted in · 1880
The seated Poet above the doors was conceived as Dante Alighieri looking down on the Hell described in his Divine Comedy. The same figure later became the independent Thinker.