Rodin by Ben Pollitt on Prezi. Auguste Rodin: The Burghers of Calais (1989.407. Rodin. Rodin's The Kiss. From WikipediaThe Private Life Of A Masterpiece Is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Like many of Rodin's best-known individual sculptures, including The Thinker, the embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The Gates of Hell, commissioned for a planned museum of art in Paris. The couple were later removed from the Gates and replaced with another pair of lovers located on the smaller right-hand column. The sculpture, The Kiss, was originally titled Francesca da Rimini, as it depicts the 13th-century Italian noblewoman immortalised in Dante's Inferno (Circle 2, Canto 5) who falls in love with her husband Giovanni Malatesta's younger brother Paolo.
Having fallen in love while reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, the couple are discovered and killed by Francesca's husband. RODIN - WORKS. The Gates of Hell by A. Rodin - The story of a damned artwork (26 min) Transcript of the introduction and Act I Introduction The Rodin Museum, in Paris: an imposing door made of bronze. It seems to be swarming with lost souls, all of them sinking into hell. The Rodin Museum, at Meudon, in the Hauts-de-Seine Département. A door made of plaster. There are only three figures, at the top. Both doors were the work of one man, Auguste Rodin, and there is something deeply mysterious about them. The Meudon plaster door seems unfinished – but is the only one exhibited by Rodin in his lifetime - in 1900. Act I. But first, what is the "Gates of Hell "? Standing six meters high and four wide, and containing eight tons of bronze, it makes an impressive showing in the courtyard of the Rodin Museum.
It certainly seems to be a door, with its: • two leaves • richly ornamented side-posts, and • tympanum And yet, it does not open, because: • the figures are too entangled • it has no opening mechanism At eye level, graves are opening, and human forms are emerging from them . Rodin's The Gates of Hell.