The Thinker , Auguste Rodin French, Bronze, green patina; Gift of Ralph King, Rodin's Thinker in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art's building, long view at night. Rodin's Thinker in front of the Cleveland Museum of Art's building, on a sunny day. The Thinker , c.

Object Details
The Thinker
Jump to navigation. The de Young and Legion of Honor are temporarily closed to the public. Learn about extra precautions to welcome you back soon. Rodin's Thinker is perhaps his best known monumental work, first conceived circa — as a depiction of the poet Dante.
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The work shows a nude male figure of heroic size sitting on a rock with his chin resting on one hand as though deep in thought, often used as an image to represent philosophy. There are about 28 full-sized castings , in which the figure is about cm high, though not all were made during Rodin's lifetime and under his supervision. There are various other versions, several in plaster, and studies and posthumous castings exist in a range of sizes. Rodin first conceived the figure as part of his work The Gates of Hell commissioned in , but the first of the familiar monumental bronze castings did not appear until Rodin based this on The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , and most of the figures in the work represented the main characters in the poem with The Thinker at the center of the composition over the doorway and somewhat larger than most of the other figures. Some critics believe that it was originally intended to depict Dante at the gates of Hell, pondering his great poem. Other critics reject that theory, pointing out that the figure is naked while Dante is fully clothed throughout his poem, and that the sculpture's physique does not correspond to Dante's effete figure.
The large muscular figure has captivated audiences for decades in his moment of concentrated introspection. The Thinker was originally called The Poet and was conceived as part of The Gates of Hell , initially a commission for a pair of bronze doors to a planned museum of decorative arts in Paris. In these examples, a The nude form is seated on a rock, his back hunched forward, brows furrowed, chin resting on his relaxed hand, and mouth thrust into his knuckles. Still and pensive, he observes the twisting figures of those suffering in the circles of Hell below. Some scholars suggest that the Poet was originally meant to represent Dante, but the muscular and bulky form contrasts with typical sculptures that depict the poet as slender and lithe. After the proposed museum fell through, Rodin continued to rework many of the figures from The Gates , using some in new ways and exhibiting others individually.