L'enfer Selon Rodin

The Gate of Hell is the central work of Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), the universally known sculptor. Commissioned in 1880, it occupied the artist passionately for a whole decade before he exhibited it, in 1900, in an incomplete form that continues to intrigue a century later. Inspired in particular by Dante's Divine Comedy and Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, the sculptor created a work of exceptional ambition, both in terms of the number of characters that populate its surface - more than 200 - and its imposing dimensions. The new freedom in the representation of the bodies plays a major role in the fascination that this unfinished masterpiece does not fail to arouse. From Dante to Baudelaire, from a moral and religious Hell to an inner and intimate Hell, the whole mystery of The Gates of Hell is revealed: its genesis, its evolution, but also its unexpected resurgence in today's art. The essays by the best specialists and an iconography of unprecedented scope on this subject make this book a must-read.